


Muscles better and nerves more.

by cathedraltunes



Series: Elephants and Such Things [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Celebrity culture, Eddie Lives, Established Relationship, M/M, Stan Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:22:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24157318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedraltunes/pseuds/cathedraltunes
Summary: To his own amusement and consternation, in 2022 Richie Tozier wins the Man of Style award. Eddie Kaspbrak navigates it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Elephants and Such Things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743322
Comments: 74
Kudos: 344
Collections: Quarantine It Fic Fest





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify on the tag Body Dysphoria: 
> 
> In this particular fix-it universe, I chose to write Eddie as surviving with a spinal cord injury that directly affects his mobility. He uses a cane, a leg brace, and a wheelchair. At times Eddie struggles with how he feels about his body and his disability. Richie also struggles some with his own body image, based upon his height and general build. 
> 
> Additionally, Stan did attempt suicide after Mike's call although here he survived the attempt.
> 
> I have tried to write all these things with sensitivity, but intention is not reality. If you have any concerns with how I have written any of these characters or themes, please do not hesitate to let me know.
> 
> I have zero knowledge of how InStyle runs its awards shows and I did not care enough to research.

i like my body when it is with your  
body. It is so quite new a thing.  
Muscles better and nerves more.  
i like your body. i like what it does,  
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine  
of your body and its bones,and the trembling  
-firm-smooth ness and which i will  
again and again and again  
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,  
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz  
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes  
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

\- e e cummings

  
  
  
  


**the dressing room, 2022.**

After the hairdresser and the make-up artist came the stylist to help Richie with his suit. To Edward, called Eddie, called Eds, this seemed somewhat ridiculous. At forty-five Rich knew how to put on a button-down shirt and a blazer. 

“It’s the ritual of Cud,” Rich had explained the night before.

“What?”

Rich glowed to receive such a straight-forward opening. Eddie, biting down the edges of a smile, twisted his wrist in a tight circle: hurry it up.

“This is a very important sacrament that must be performed before any awards ceremony. We sacrifice the three stylists to our self-importance. Then we eat them, so that they become part of our identity as a celebrity. We chew the cud, if you will.”

“What voice is that?” Eddie had turned over in bed that he might pillow his head on Richie’s chest. He did this mindful of his leg in ways that no longer required conscious thought. “Was that Rabbi Uris? Cud is vomit.”

“You’re ruining my joke, Eds.”

“You ruined your joke when you made it.” But he rose and kissed Richie with lips and teeth on the knob of his throat, and Richie brought up his large hands to gather Eddie on top of him.

Now in the little dressing room Eddie sat with only the usual discomfort in the chair by the vanity, listening as Richie chatted with Mike on FaceTime. Eddie had a book open in his lap. He’d read scattered pages from it and remembered none. His legs stretched out before him, the left with its sleeker brace set firm above and below the knee. It was the brace Richie called the Man About Town. The cane he’d leaned against that little white dresser with its mirror. 

“Yeah, Bev said it’s a Picard weave.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” Mike’s amusement carried through tinnily.

“Renard weave?”

“Probably closer.”

“Ah! Jacquard weave.”

“There it is. He got it.”

“No way you know what a Jacquard weave is.”

“No, I can just tell when you’re bullshitting.”

“What an asshole,” remarked Richie. “Hey, Eddie, am I bullshitting?”

“Am I a matador?”

Richie broke out laughing.

“Try to hold still,” suggested the stylist.

Eddie glanced in that mirror. Reflected in the silver-backed glass, the stylist bent to run the lint roller down the small of Richie’s back. Rich’s shoulders were set straight, his back a long and upright line. The breadth of him flexed. His shoulder blades made wings under the dove grey linen shirt. 

The weave had something to do with it. Beverly had designed the whole of the suit. “A gift,” she’d suggested. “For the Man of Style.”

“Jesus. Don’t say that,” said Richie. “You’re the real Man of Style.”

“I know, baby, but at least I can try to make you look good up there.”

“Ahhh!” Richie had shouted. “Bev gets off a good one! That’s the crack of the rifle! And they’re off.”

Beverly would introduce Richie tonight. They’d plans to take brunch with her and Ben at some trendy café in the hotel she'd insisted they book. “Assuming you don’t stay up too late,” she’d murmured. Richie had gasped theatrically. Eddie said, “I’ll make sure he’s up,” and Richie had gasped again. Then she'd told Richie to hand the phone to Eddie, and Eddie had taken it out of the room to chat, as Richie complained that it was his phone.

The shirt Beverly had designed had woven into it delicate silver threads picking out esoteric shapes, nearly geometric. All of it gleamed, the fabric a rich sheen. The dark and heavy blue blazer would show striking against the grey and silver. So too the tie against which Richie had made protest and the blue frame glasses against which he had not.

Eddie watched him in the mirror: the fine movements of his shoulders as he tried not to laugh too forcefully. His dark curls, artfully arranged then as artfully disarrayed, teasing just so at the collar of the shirt. He turned for the stylist. Eddie looked to the book. His thumb rasped across the worn paper. A vintage paperback, Ace science fiction, from Bill. He glanced sidelong at Richie.

Richie grinned at him. A lean muscle in his jaw pulled. Eddie wanted to take the tie off its post on the wall, sling it around Richie’s neck, and drag him to his knees. 

“I do not want to stare at your ass,” said Mike.

“Mike, don’t go!” Richie shouted over his shoulder. He crossed his eyes at Eddie and stuck out his tongue. Eddie flipped him off, and Richie’s grin spread. “You still gotta tell me what you really think about Bill’s new show.”

“He’s in the office if you want me to go grab him.”

“Why would I wanna ask Bill what you think about Bill’s new show?”

“‘Cause I’m trying to escape this conversation with your buttcheeks.”

“You should be honored to speak with those fine statesmen. Eddie, tell Mike he should be honored.”

“Hi, Mike!” Eddie shouted.

“Hi, Eddie!”

“You can hang up!”

“Great! Maybe I can finally eat these damn eggs!”

“On this,” said Richie, in an eerie Brando, “the day of my InStyle award. You two would show me such disrespect.”

“Hey, I’ll send you an e-mail,” said Mike. “About the show. It looks good.”

“It’s on SyFy!”

“Beep beep, Rich. Bill’s proud of it. Now if you don’t mind I’m gonna go eat my eggs.”

“Aw, he hung up,” said Richie.

“He sounds good,” said Eddie. 

He let himself look Richie over while Richie pouted but did not squirm. The stylist had moved on to the creases of his trousers.

“You talked to him yesterday.”

“And I’m saying he sounds good today too.”

“Today’s not about Mike,” said Richie, “today’s about me. Your husband. Your very own man of style.”

“Hey, that reminds me, I had your Fozzie Bear pajamas ironed.”

“That’s so sweet and unnecessary! Aw, Eds. Eddie, my love.”

“You’re avoiding the insult.”

“I’m impervious to it. Slides right off me. C’mon, you can heckle better than that.”

Eddie flicked his eyes showily, from Richie’s nose to his gleaming leather shoes to his eyes, startling blue and pupils now blowing. So easy, thought Eddie not with amusement but a burst of shy pleasure. Absurd that he could feel so after two years of marriage. He’d never felt like this with Myra, but then he supposed that was why the divorce hadn’t hurt.

Eddie settled into the chair and lifted the book. “Not in front of the stylist.”

Richie made a series of deliberately overplayed choking sounds, but Eddie, enjoying himself, didn’t bother to look. It would only give Richie satisfaction. He didn’t intend to do so this early in the day.

“All right, now we can put on the blazer,” said the stylist.

Eddie resettled with the book. He glanced over its edge at Richie, joking now with the stylist, now posing with his arms out to have the seams of the blazer cleaned and tugged straight. He ducked his head. His overbite showed when he laughed. 

The thing in Eddie yawned with its teeth. Look at me, he thought. Everyone else tonight would look at Richie. They ought to look at him. Eddie wanted Richie only to look at him.

The stylist made some small joke. Richie laughed again. He tipped his head back. The knob in his throat worked. The steady lines around his eyes folded. No one could have said Richard Tozier was beautiful. He was too squarely made. 

Eddie let the book fall open in his lap. His thumb marked the page. He watched Richie. Look at me. Look at me. Eddie looked at Richie.

His shoulders stretched and eased. The button-down shirt was too thick to show the sleeveless white undershirt. Eddie knew it to be there. As well did he know the placement of freckles on Richie’s upper arms, how the muscle appeared soft there till Richie would fold his arms or pull on a line or door.

The stylist brought Richie the suit jacket. He shrugged into it. The stylist set the hanger with the tie still draped from it on the post beside the vanity. Another run with the lint roller followed. Eddie glanced at his own reflection. The scar of his cheek was a faintly darker line that thickened then narrowed again. He’d worn a simple black suit. He looked… How did he look? He looked Eddie. 

His eyes flickered. Like a moth, beating its fine furred wings in percussive rhythm at a bared light bulb, he turned again to Richie.

Did it show, this wanting in him? As in the same room as Richie nevertheless he longed to be in the space that Richie occupied. It was only that old wild feeling. A child, slinging mud, he had wanted to scab his knees, he had wanted to spit onto his skin-split knuckles, he wanted the dirt in his ears and the worms in his hair; he’d wanted to do the things that Richie did. The woodsman with the axe cut open the big bad wolf, not to free the grandmother or the girl, but to fit in that warm fold made and to be then folded into it with the wolf’s heart that still beat and the smells of earth and blood and things unknown and the claustrophobic blackness. 

Such feelings turned and threshed in Eddie’s sore breast, such thoughts half-formed. He could articulate none of it. He only felt as he must have emerging from underneath Derry, heart’s blood staining Richie and Mike, the sun that vast and distant heat that looked with indifferent love on Eddie as it did the worms tilled out of the wet soil. 

The stylist reached for the tie. Eddie stirred.

“I’ll do the tie.”

The stylist shot Richie a question with his eyes. Richie looked over his shoulder at Eddie, now rising with a hand braced on the vanity. The brace helped.

“Yeah, thanks, Mark,” said Richie. He clapped the stylist on the shoulder and reached into his own pocket. “Eddie’s got me covered from here. Hey, grab anything you want from the minibar, okay? Thanks, man.” He pressed a number of bills into the guy’s hand. 

Mark said, “No problem, Mr Tozier,” and took his leave.

Richie smiled as Eddie crossed that brief distance with the tie in hand. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, Rich.”

He carefully popped Richie’s shirt collar, pinching the cloth here then here then here on either side of his neck so that the starched fabric rose without crease.

“You gonna tie me up? This must be a real fantasy for you.”

“You always ask questions you know the answers to?”

“Just trying to build some tension.” Richie held his chin even as Eddie looped the silken cloth around his neck. “You know, crowd work. Get you ready for the big show tonight.”

“And what’s the big show gonna be, Richie.”

“Now what kind of performer blows the surprise this early?”

“Probably some second-rate stand-up,” said Eddie, and he drew the tie sharply so that Richie went still all over. 

He blinked with a naif’s sweetness at Eddie. Eddie dropped his own eyes, smiling. He wound the tie’s skinny tail in a series of crisp folds. It was meditative beneath his hands. Richie breathed shallowly. His throat clicked: he swallowed. He’d lifted his chin just so, and the fat knob in his neck bobbed. 

Bringing the shortened tail into a final figure eight loop, Eddie tucked the end through its loop and turned the tail to the back of the tie, tightening the whole of it.

When he’d done, Eddie pinched the collar into place again. His hands lingered, fingers washed over with something like an electrical charge. Then slowly, his eyelashes lifting, he dragged his hands flat over Richie’s chest and lifted his head.

Richie licked at his lips.

“So, uh. What’s that knot called?”

“It’s the Eldredge,” said Eddie. He brushed the back of one curled finger to the knot. “The knot looks like a braid.”

Richie hummed. He caught Eddie’s hand there at the knot. Eddie met his gaze. 

“Come on the carpet with me,” said Richie. 

“I don’t like the cameras,” said Eddie, as he always said. “The media—”

“Yeah.” Richie had closed his eyes. He sighed a little, a trembling breath. His shoulders slumped with it, and Eddie wanted with sudden cramping ferocity to tell him. “I know. I know.”

Eddie cupped Richie’s jaw with the hand Richie did not hold tightly to his breast, over his heart.

“I’m not ashamed of you.”

“I know you’re not.”

“It’s just that. It’s not for me.”

“I know,” Richie said.

The sunlight was bright in that room with its gold brocaded white wallpaper. All of the room showed white and limned. Eddie ached.

Richie exhaled again. His shoulders rose. He brought Eddie’s hand to his mouth and kissed him hard on the knuckles, the band of Eddie’s wedding ring surely harsh on the soft skin at the corner of Richie’s generous mouth. His beard scraped at Eddie’s hand.

“Okay,” said Richie.

  
  
  
  
**the phone call.**

Eddie would never regain full mobility in his left leg. Nor would he be rid of the pain in his spine or the numbness in his hip, the lack of temperature control so-called of his left foot that sometimes sweated in the cold or goose-pricked in heat. The doctor in Bangor had explained this to him very kindly, with a manner constructed for compassion. It was hardly her fault he would have preferred a clinical report.

The rehabilitative doctors at New York-Presbyterian agreed. 

“I’ll be frank with you,” said Dr. Herskovitz. “The exercises, they’ll help you keep going. But you’re gonna be using that wheelchair more in about ten years. You might make it another ten after that where you can still stand up and walk some. And who knows. There’s always miracles. But you’re gonna have to come to terms with this. There’s gonna be a day when you can’t walk.”

That was five years ago, not too long after Derry. Nearly a year after Derry, maybe. He remembered the junebugs and the look on Myra’s face when he told her over the little breakfast table that he’d given it some thought and what he thought was they ought to get a divorce. July, 2017. Eddie was still relearning how to walk on a leg with a couple clusters of dead nerve endings and a knee that didn’t like to bend.

He did his exercises the way some people prayed, at scheduled hours. That night Eddie worked his leg with the medicine ball in the den. He’d Stan on speaker phone. Richie was in the office with the glass-paned door, talking on Zoom with his manager, Steve.

“You sound great, man,” Eddie said, partway through the conversation. “Tired. But great.”

“Yeah,” said Stan. “Well. We haven’t posted it yet,” referring to the Losers’ group on Facebook, “but uh. We filed the adoption papers this morning.”

“Holy shit, Stan!” Eddie eased his chest to the floor, letting his knee come gently off the ball. “You should’ve opened with that.”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d say anything.”

“You can say something.”

“So we took Naomi and Joan out to Sky Zone and Chuck-e-Cheese after.” 

“How’d Joan do? She’s so little.” 

Naomi was eleven but Joan only six. They were half-sisters, and Stan and Patty had fostered them for three years.

“She liked the trampolines,” said Stan. “Patty thinks she might enjoy a gymnastics class, but I’m worried about her joints.”

Eddie exhaled and scrubbed absently at the sweat on his brow. He could feel how his hair had blown out. Good thing they weren’t on FaceTime, he thought. Probably Eddie looked like someone had stuck a graying cotton ball on his head.

“Well, take it from me,” he said. “Unless you push her into competitive gymnastics, her chances of osteoarthritis won’t be any higher.”

“And if she wants to go into competitive gymnastics? Do we tell her no? Do we pull her out of the class?”

Eddie scrubbed at his face. At last he said, “I can’t answer that, Stan.”

“You don’t have to answer it,” said Stan. “Thanks for listening.” He sighed a little into the phone. “And I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. How I brought that up to you.”

“It’s all right,” said Eddie. He began carefully maneuvering his leg behind him, to try out some stretches that would pull on the too-tight tendons around his left knee. “I’m forty-six, Stanley, I know how to manage my feelings with regards to my mother.”

“Please don’t use your professional words with me, Edward.”

“Fuck you.”

“Thank you, Eddie,” said Stan. “I’m happy that we were able to come to a mutual understanding vis-à-vis the appropriate language.”

Eddie blew out his nose rather than laugh. He let the stretch go and simply laid there on the yoga mat, his arms folded under his chin and his legs aching. 

“They’ll approve it, Stan.”

Stan hummed. “I had three psychiatrists clear me.”

“So they’ll approve it.”

“Even though I tried to take my piece off the board.”

“Yes, Stan,” said Eddie, “even though you tried to kill yourself.”

“See,” said Stan, pleased. “Now we’re both assholes.”

“I’m just giving you what you want.”

“What I want is a god damned Long Island Iced Tea.”

“No, Stanley.” Eddie closed his eyes and luxuriated in the feel of his body around him, even the worn thrum of his chest where the surgeons had dug out half a lung; even the bite of his knee, the contrary coldness of the accompanying hip. “Your meds.”

“My meds.”

“What a bunch of Losers we turned out to be.”

The sound, distant, of movement as Stan walked in his house, so far from Eddie and Richie in Chicago.

“Joan overheard me calling Bill a Loser the other day. She wanted to know why she couldn’t call Matt a loser but it was okay for me to call Uncle Bill that.”

Eddie laughed. “Did you tell her it’s because Uncle Bill’s a Loser?”

“I told her I was very sorry,” said Stan, “and that I would never say it again. And then I thanked her for reminding me that loser was a very bad word. You can stop laughing at any time. Whenever it’s convenient for you.”

The office door opened. Richie stuck his head out. His curls were typical: a mess pulled first one way and then another by his habit of scratching and pulling. 

“Just getting my phone,” he mouthed at Eddie as he squeezed out from behind the door. 

“It’s Stan,” Eddie mouthed in return.

“Yo, Stannie!” Richie bellowed at top volume. “How’s it hanging in the beth midrash!”

“Tell Richie he can debate me on the Torah on Friday.”

“Stan says you’re illiterate.”

“My secret revealed,” said Richie. He stepped over Eddie and started picking around the couch cushions. The couch was a long, L-shaped sectional draped in crocheted afghan blankets. “For too long I had to hide my shame. But now finally,” he said, muffled by the cushion he’d pulled up, “the healing can begin. Where the fuck is my phone? E-e-eddie,” he whined.

“It’s on the charger in the kitchen, numbnuts.”

Richie shoved the cushion back into place and stepped back over Eddie, or rather he made to step over him then stopped with a foot on either side of Eddie so he could bend over, grunting as he did so, and kiss Eddie’s sweat tacky forehead with a noisy mwah!

“Thank you, sweetie pa-teetie,” he cooed. “See ya the fuck around, Stannie!” he hollered.

Eddie punched at his calf but Richie darted away, nimble-footed despite his height.

Stan sighed longly and at great volume. “Disgusting,” he said.

“Don’t be homophobic, Stannie,” said Eddie in his best Richie voice.

“You sound like Shrek,” said Stan flatly. “From the movie _Shrek_. Do you remember that movie, Eddie? Do you remember the movie _Shrek_?”

“Believe it or not, I had other things to do when the movie _Shrek_ came out,” said Eddie, “like working on my MBA.”

The conversation wound to a close. Eddie yawned and rolled to his back and stretched out his arms and shoulders. His back arched some. He thought idly of a warm shower. Satisfaction filled his belly, fatty-rich. With a little more interest he thought of a warm shower and of Richie. Yawning again, Eddie began the painstaking work of getting to his knees then his feet. 

He rolled up the mat and velcroed it neatly shut, then put it in the heavy woven trunk by the couch’s near arm. The medicine ball followed. He’d put a bath towel on the wheelchair, covering the back and the seat, before exercising. The fabric bunched some as he sat in the chair and unlocked it. 

The kitchen was upstairs. He took the ramp rather than push the stairs with his brace and cane. 

“Yeah, thanks, Linda.” Laughter burbled in Richie’s throat as he wrapped up the call. 

Linda was his agent, a woman who stood five feet in heels and had a voice like if Minnie Mouse spoke with a megaphone. Richie saw Eddie wheel into the kitchen and grinned wolfish at him. He gestured to a plate set on the table: oatmeal with banana and almonds, and a serving of last night’s grilled chicken reheated. 

“Thanks,” said Eddie. 

“Water or beer?”

“Water then beer.”

Richie vibrated as he moved around the kitchen. He had something.

“What is it?” asked Eddie as Richie set the bottle of Perrier in front of him. “You finally get that movie?”

“Nah, still waiting on the call-back.” Richie dropped into the seat left of Eddie. His legs jogged out of rhythm. “C’mon and guess.” He pitched his voice to a midwestern carny timber. “If you can guess you win a kiss! Step right up, young man, and place your bet!”

Eddie chewed his mouthful of oatmeal and swallowed. “Linda found you a primetime slot on CIVIC-TV.”

Richie buzzered then eyed Eddie in a deliberate show of lashes rising and falling. His lips pursed; he bit his lower lip and smiled.

“Wrong guess,” said Richie, “but mm, lo-o-ong live the new flesh in _deed_. Dealer says you won a kiss anyway.” He switched rapidly from the carny barker to his flirtatious grandmother voice then on to the Vegas Performer.

Eddie, too tired and too strung out with lactic acid for wit, just spooned the last of the oatmeal into his mouth and crooked a finger at Richie.

Laughing, Richie swooped in to lick the traces of cinnamon from Eddie’s pouched out lips. Eddie swallowed and let his lips demurely part, so Richie might lick the flavor from his teeth as well. 

“Want another spin,” Richie said into Eddie’s mouth. “Win another prize.”

“Why don’t you just tell me,” said Eddie, snaking his arms around Richie’s curled in shoulders, “and then you can win a prize.”

“What do I win?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

“I like the odds,” said Richie. “These odds feel good. I think I got a chance at the pot. All right, well, you better brace for this one.” He leaned as far back as Eddie’s linked hands would allow him. “Take a good look at your very own Dick Tozier.”

Eddie did. Richie had on his Robotech Defense Force t-shirt and a pair of heavily wrinkled Daffy Duck lounge pants, the ones that had the hole at the back of the thigh. He looked, as he always looked to Eddie, comfortably huge in the way that he imagined a bear must look comfortable in its hugeness. A beast content with its fat and its muscle and the soft movements of its skin over both. These were things of which Richie was sensitive: the thick fatty layer under his skin, the curve of his gut, the hair that curled over much of it, the height he countered by hunching shoulders and spine.

“Eddie, my love,” said Richie, “you are looking at 2022’s Man of Style.”

“What? Like, for People magazine?”

Richie cackled. “No, it’s this thing InStyle magazine does and they decided that I’m, uh, that I’m—Eddie, stop thinking about Rick Hunter.”

“I’m not thinking about Rick Hunter, Jesus.”

“I can see it in your eyes when you look at my shirt. But they uh, they looked at Perez Hilton’s su-u-uper popular column about all the times I’ve looked homeless in public, and they decided that I was like. The It Guy of 2022. The fashion icon of the year.”

“Oh!” said Eddie. “Richie, that’s great!”

Richie’s nose creased as he barked a short laugh. “What? No, it’s a goof.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean there’s no way I won the Man of Fashion Award.”

“Man of Style,” said Eddie. “What, do you think Linda is fucking with you? Linda’s never told a joke in her life. That’s why she’s such a great agent.”

“She’s a fucking killer agent,” Richie agreed. “But it’s a _joke_ , Eddie. I’m gonna have to write them a letter on, I don’t know, parchment paper thanking them for the honor but reminding them that Taika Watiti exists.”

“No, shut up.” Eddie frowned. He pulled on the hairs at Richie’s nape. “You deserve this. Richie, you’ve looked so good.”

“Okay, Mr Brooklyn Babes 2009 through 2019,” said Richie, “but maybe you’re the Loser that needs glasses.”

“What? No, Rich, you dingus,” said Eddie. 

Delighted, Richie mouthed “Dingus?”

“Fuck you! I hate when you do this. You know that you’re hot as shit, right?”

“Did you or did you not see my boxers through the hole in my lounge pants?”

Eddie glanced down. He could in fact see the hem of the boxers. They were the TMNT boxers. 

Richie went on: “It’s _hilarious_.”

Eddie said, “Well, why’s it funny?”

“Uh, because of my shirts,” said Richie, “and my face, and my hair, and my glasses, and my body. You know these things. You fuck these things.”

“I fuck them because you’re hot,” said Eddie. “It’s not my fault it took everyone else forty-six years to screw their eyeballs in.”

“Eddie, I got papped wearing an Autothot t-shirt with a mustard stain on it,” Richie protested laughingly, “at a Circle K, buying condoms and five boxes of Snoballs. That was last week.”

“So? And you wore that suit Bev designed, at that premiere last month. And the Dior suit to the Emmys—”

“Okay, well, Bev picked out the first one and you picked out the Dior suit—”

“It’s _Dior_ , not _Djoor_ , it rhymes with Eeyore—”

“See? No way I’m a Man of Style.”

“You filled the suits,” said Eddie. “You’re the one who made them look good. Do you even look at yourself when you’re dressed up?”

“Eds, when I’m in a monkey suit, all I’m thinking is if I gotta be choked by a tie, I’d prefer it if you were holding the tie and doing the choking.”

“You seriously have no idea how hot you are! This is insane! There are fucking forum threads devoted to the way your dick looks in designer jeans!”

“There’s what?” Richie’s eyes crinkled. “How do you know this? Eddie, are you on some freak forums?”

“I’m so fucking pissed at you right now,” said Eddie. “You’re going to this thing.”

“I am not going to this thing and looking like somebody rolled Yogi Bear on stage.”

“You’re going to this thing and you’re going to look incredible,” said Eddie, “and then I’m going to fuck you in your suit, you dickhead.”

“Oh, Eddie,” said Richie, bemusement making lines of his forehead, “when you say dickhead, it almost sounds like sweetheart.”

“How can you never accept a compliment? Are you going to be like this forever?”

Richie rolled his eyes and hummed, letting Eddie draw him closer again with those arms around his neck.

“Mm,” he said. “Well, maybe if you demonstrated how hot I am… In some way… I just can’t think of it.”

“I have to finish my post-exercise meal first,” said Eddie.

“Ah,” said Richie. “L’amour.”  
  
  
  
**beverly marsh introducing:**

Glasses made chimes with the movement of spoons. They had dined; they had chatted. The cameramen had gathered the footage they needed for their magazines, their websites, the media moguls that signed their checks in exchange for that touch of celebrity glitz. The man of honor had ruined a number of photos with obscene gestures or comical face pulls. This was widely considered the Tozier tax.

Now the lights dimmed. From the wings Beverly Marsh crossed the little stage and a hushed applause rolled wave-like through the crowd. She looked Joan of Arc, fitted in a silver filigree bodice made to bring to mind a jeweled cuirass. Heavy folds of dark green fabric fell in asymmetrical mountainous lines along her legs. A silver-plated rondel set with five emerald stones covered her left shoulder, and she’d worn darkly dyed boots rather than heels. The usual admiration fell across those gathered. The secondary cameraman moved discretely to better capture the light, how it flashed over her.

“Woo, Ringwald!” A man wolf-whistled.

Beverly laughed. She tucked a gleaming curl behind her ear and leaned into the microphone at the pedestal. 

“Thanks, Richie.”

Laughter flowed then ebbed as Beverly, her cheeks faint-blushed apples with dagger lines drawn to her mouth, wriggled her nose somewhere into the dark. The distinctive snorting giggle of Richie Tozier set off another round of laughter.

“Hello, and good evening,” Beverly breezed over this disruption. “I’m Beverly Marsh, and I’m the reason we’re here tonight.”

“That’s true!”

“Beep-beep, Richard.” She grinned. “Four years ago Richie called me. He’s allowed to do this, because we’re friends, despite what you may have read in US Weekly.” 

With the ease of a MLB slugger eating up the red dirt that led home, she stepped over the crowd’s amusement. 

“I of course answered the phone gracefully. Rich, I said, I swear to God if this is another Albert on the can—” Beverly paused. Twinkling, she continued: “It was not another prince. Someone had finally performed that miracle we all thought impossible: they convinced Richie he should dress like a grown-up. Sometimes,” she added. 

Richie’s laugh was loudest. Anyone seated close enough to see him would find his eyes creased into dear crescents. If you stood in the wings and looked out at him, you would see only a pale flash of his bearded face; but perhaps you would know. He clapped once and shook his folded hands at her.

“But that isn’t my story to tell,” said Beverly. “And I’m not really here to introduce Richie Tozier to you all. No, I’m here to introduce the man that will introduce you to Richie Tozier. Fashionists, and beloved patrons of the arts, I gladly present to you Richie’s husband: Edward Kaspbrak.”

In the wings he took a breath. His hip twinged. An hour ago he had taken two Tylenol with half a glass of sparkling water. As she said his name, he grasped the red enameled cane that matched the red herringbone suit Beverly had switched him into not thirty minutes gone. With a straight back, and a chin pointed high, Edward Kaspbrak stepped out into the spotlight.


	2. Chapter 2

**the trashmouth says i do.**

When I said we should write our own wedding vows, Eduardo here made me swear I wouldn’t make any dick jokes. So the rest of this is your fault. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Eddie.

The first time I met you, I think we were eight, uh, maybe nine, and I said something smartass to this kid that got held back and he called me a word I’m still not allowed to say in front of my mom – sorry, Mom – and we must’ve been eight because this was the first day of third grade. And uh, you were just this little twerp sitting at the desk next to mine, and you stood up right as that other kid was about to pound me and you said he had to be brain-dead if he punched me because he had no idea what kind of diseases I had in my blood. Because you’d taken one look at me that morning picking my nose and figured, oh, yeah, this Tozier kid has worms up the wazoo. But this guy, all he heard was brain-dead, so he whammed you over the head and then he beat the snot out of me anyway. 

And uh, that’s not when I decided I loved you, although that would probably make for a better story, but it’s when I figured you were okay, Kaspbrak, even if you were a little twerp. Growing up in Maine in the ‘80s we did a lot of stupid shit with rusted metal and spit promises and uh, playing in the drainage pipes – yeah, sorry, Mom – but even when you were telling us about tetanus and lockjaw and malaria and those dick parasites from the Amazon river, you were still doing all that stupid shit with us. 

That doesn’t count as a dick joke! It’s a real thing! I read about it in National Geographic. Okay, I read it on Wikipedia. You know that when you scowl like that it just makes me want to kiss you. Oh, so now you’re blushing. Eddie Kaspbrak, everyone. He’s blushing because I mentioned kissing at our wedding. Ow! He pinched me! And in front of God. No, no, mercy, mercy. Uncle.

That’s just so Eddie. Doing something like that. Because you aren’t afraid of anything. Or if you are afraid of it, you face it anyway.

You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known, Eddie. Being around you, um, you make me brave, too. It was hard. Growing up when we did. Where we did. And I used to think I loved you when we were kids and I was so scared anybody would ever know. Uh, that you would know, and you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore. And that wasn’t fair to you, but I was so scared I didn’t even know it wasn’t fair. 

And uh, it turns out that actually, I was wrong about loving you. I don’t think I really knew what it was like loving you until the reunion, four years ago. And uh, you um. Um, there was that storm in Derry, and I could have died, but you, uh.

Sorry. Sorry. I wanted to make Eddie cry, not me. Jeez, this is embarrassing. 

Um, I wrote a lot more really funny shit to say but none of it’s really important. And I don’t remember as much of it as I thought I would and Eddie would say that’s my fault for not studying. He’s not wrong.

I’m trying to be a better man. I want to be better. Eddie, you make me feel like I’m already better. And I want to make you feel like that too. I want to make you feel brave too. When I’m with you, Eddie, everything’s a little easier. And I’d like to try to make things easier for you too. I love you. Uh, surprise. 

Aw, jeez, don’t give me your pocket square, man. I’m just gonna mess this up. God. Crying at my own happy ending. What a joke. Yeah, I’m gonna use it, Eddie. No take backs. It’s my pocket square now. You can use mine.

And uh, before I hand it on over to Edward, I just want to say real quick to everyone, to my mom and to God and to all our friends, yes, Stanley, I can see you avoiding eye contact: Eddie’s meat is huge, and I will never go vegetarian. Thank you. Good night, Bar Harbor, you’ve been wonderful.

  
  
  
  


**the great red carpet switcheroo.**

The Lexus drew up the line of cars waiting for admittance to the drop off. In the back seat, Richie sat with his legs widespread so he might jostle Eddie with his knee. Eddie in his tidy black suit gave him a long and low-lidded look. 

Richie nudged at Eddie again. Each breath he took swelled his chest. The silver pocket square stuck out at a crooked angle. He’d fiddled with it. 

“Your pocket square,” said Eddie.

With a low and wandering hum, Richie rubbed his knee along Eddie’s near leg, the left leg. His eyes were cast dark behind his glasses. His hand sat casual and fingers curling up on the narrow leather-encased seat between them. 

Unlike Richie, Eddie did not sit with his knees parted. He did not settle further still in the driver’s side seat of the back, pivoting his hips slightly. Richie’s lips pinched. He bit them inside to prevent a grin. Eddie knew these habits of Richie’s very well. 

The driver tapped two fingers against the steering wheel. The car advanced. Richie bit his lower lip with purpose, the crooked incisor showing white. The skin paled under the bite. C’mon, Eddie, he said like so. Don’t you wanna touch me? 

Richie had collected records throughout the eighties. The autumn of 1986, he’d picked up a used vinyl of Joan Jett’s _Bad Reputation_. They were ten. In those days Eddie would sneak to the Tozier’s house under the guise of going to the library.

“Dude, you’ve got to listen to this.” Richie had ambushed him just inside the door. “This chick belts! She rocks hard, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

Richie blasted him with a raspberry and an armpit fart noise. Then he’d ushered Eddie into the den and both shocked and elated Eddie with his first real taste of punk rock. They agreed “Bad Reputation” was the best but all the songs kicked ass, even the stuff on the B-side. 

It was another song that pricked nails at the base of Eddie’s spine, looking at Richie wiggling his shoulders at him from across the backseat of the Lexus. The drums came on in his head, then the guitar chord. _Every girl and boy needs a little joy,_ snarled Joan Jett. _All you do is sit and stare._

His hands remember the slurred whisper of the tie, drawn sharply around Richie's throat. He'd folded it against the beast of Richie's heart, the pulse nestled in the low hollow of the neck. How very still Richie had stood as Eddie very nearly touched him. The cloth sleek under Eddie's fingers, the starched edge of the collar popped white against Richie's grey-spattered beard.

Richie slid his foot along the floor to touch the silver toe of his shoe to the outside curve of Eddie's foot. His eyes were soft and pupil-blacked blue. A smile fluttered at his mouth.

The car moved again. Eddie moved, too. Richie’s eyes widened. His thick eyebrows lifted. He shifted again, turning his hips towards Eddie. Eddie reached for him, fingers tip toeing up the span of his left breast. Richie’s breath stuttered.

Eddie said, “You fucked up your pocket square,” and pulled the blend of silk and linen from Richie’s suit.

Richie exhaled explosively. He murmured, “You little shit. The tie wasn't enough?”

“The driver’s right there,” Eddie muttered. He tapped Richie’s knee and, obliging as ever, Richie gave Eddie his thigh. 

Using Richie’s thigh as a sort of table, Eddie began refolding the pocket square. Diagonally in half, slightly off-center. Richie’s thigh musculature flexed and stilled. The little finger of Eddie's right hand stroked near the interior swell of Richie's thigh, very high on his leg, just shy of the inseam. Richie adjusted his knees.

Taking the left corner, Eddie folded this diagonally so that the point stood right of the first two points. The right corner he folded opposite diagonally, a fourth point now on the other side. He pinched the pocket square at its midpoint and lifted his head. Richie’s eyes gleamed. His nose nearly stroked Eddie’s cheek. Eddie looked at Richie with challenge a matter of furrowed eyebrows and his chin, jutted. Neatly, Eddie slipped the Cagney folded square into the breast pocket till only the crown with its one two three four teeth showed. 

“Eddie,” said Richie. His shoulders spread with his breath.

The Lexus stopped along the curb. “Here we are, Mr Tozier.”

Richie blinked rapidly. “Right. Uh. Thanks, Dan.”

That was when Eddie leaned up, thumb and finger light at Richie’s neck, and kissed him once rather chastely on his half-parted lips. The warmth of Richie’s mouth tingled along the intricate flesh and muscle within Eddie’s own neck. 

Eddie withdrew. Richie had flushed under his light beard. 

“Thank you,” said Eddie to the driver. He fished a $100 out of his wallet and handed it over. 

They emerged from either side of the backseat, Eddie gathering his cane. As Richie came around the car he looked unceasingly at Eddie. He came to a stop on the asphalt. The slight elevation of the sidewalk, a six-inch standard, under Eddie made them of a height. Richie tipped his head lightly to the one side. His gaze roamed Eddie's face, from his dark brow to the ghostly scar. He stretched out two fingers to touch Eddie's wrist.

“Come in with me,” said Richie. 

Eddie stroked a fingertip across the four points of the pocket square. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Richie shook his head. “No, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’m sorry for asking. I know you hate the pap shit.” He hesitated. “Can I kiss you again? The cameras are all on the carpet, I swear.”

Eddie didn’t answer; he simply leaned forward and pressed a softer brush of a kiss to the scratchy bearded dimply beneath Richie's lips. With the curb, he'd no need to roll on his toes to reach. They stood equal to one another.

Richie sighed. Eddie said, “I’ll see you inside.”

“Yeah,” said Richie. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit next to me? Nobody’s going to give a shit after they start drinking. They won’t even notice you.”

It hung between them, a single anchoring thread drawn out by some delicate spider. Richie's face was a pinched and side-pulled mess under the traces of blue eye shadow drawn through his eyelashes.

“Richie,” said Eddie.

“Yup, got it,” said Richie. His face smoothed. He drew himself upright. “Well, addio, Edoardo. Tell the generalissimo that it was a brave thing I did tonight, to walk that red carpet before the firing squad.”

Eddie wanted suddenly desperately to kiss him, to throw his arms around Richie’s shoulders and pull Richie collapsing against him before the driver and the rest of the cars waiting to pull in and perhaps even the stray cameraman who would be looking idly to the celebrities disembarking at the curb.

Instead he said, “Don’t get blood on your shoes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get blood stains out of leather?”

“Obviously not,” said Richie. “I’d just buy new shoes.”

“That’s the most—That is so insanely wasteful that I—”

“Okay, bye, Gucci loafers!” said Richie. “See you in a while, Chanel slippers crocodile!”

“I would _never_ buy Chanel!” Eddie shouted after him.

The next car in the line honked their horn. Eddie ducked away, embarrassed. He used the regular entrance while Richie joined the entrance line for the red carpet. He drew his cell phone from the inner breast pocket and texted Beverly. She replied immediately with the directions. 

Once he passed through the tickets hurdle, he hurried through the corridors of the hotel. Here, he texted to Beverly. A door popped open and there was Beverly, a white dust cloth covering her gown, beckoning to him.

“Oh, Eddie, look at you! He didn’t suspect anything?”

“Well, it’s Richie,” he said. “So it could go either way. I, uh. Did try to distract him. Hi, Ben.”

“Hey, Eddie,” said Ben. He was sitting on a short lounge with his legs propped up on a foot stool. “You look good, man. Hey, I brought that C. J. Cherryh book I was talking about. It's up in the hotel room.”

“Oh, hey, thanks,” said Eddie, pleased and for a moment distracted. “And look, before you start, I know, there's apps, but...”

“Yeah, it's different with the real thing,” said Ben. Bev called sotto voce, “Kindle is real books. Audio books are real books.”

“I'm trying to cut back on audio books, Eddie said. “Um, they're distracting for drivers, and since we're in Chicago. And with my leg.”

Ben nodded, looking thoughtful as he so often did. Eddie allowed himself a fleeting exasperation, that the intervening years had only served to accentuate every wonderful quality Ben had, much as age made saints of golden retrievers.

Two women had gathered around Beverly to resume work on her make-up and hair. A third woman standing with her hip propped on the vanity was scrolling through a smart tablet.

“Ben, can you get his suit? Thank you for sending those measurements,” Beverly explained as Ben stood and made for the shallow closet in the corner, “that made it so much easier.”

The woman at the vanity said, “Bev, darling, let them finish your eyebrows.”

“Kay, dear,” sang Beverly. She froze with her eyes rolled skyward as one of the stylists pressed her lashes with a heated curler. “Oh, Eddie, this is Kay McCall, she’s the editor of InStyle Magazine.”

The woman glanced briefly at Eddie. She’d smooth, dark brown skin and darker eyes. When she smiled at Eddie her mouth made a V.

“Oh, Beverly, he’s much prettier than you said.”

“Um, hello,” said Eddie. His skin prickled uncomfortably. Despite the fame with which his friends were well-acquainted, Eddie rarely knew what to do when confronted with their peers. “Yeah, I’m. Edward Kaspbrak, hello.” He offered his hand. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

Kay eyed him again then pushed off the vanity. She took his hand and shook it firmly once. 

“Beverly’s an old friend,” she said. “When she asked, I couldn’t say no.”

“You’ve told me no plenty of times.” The stylist had moved on to Beverly’s other eye. 

“Only on the important things,” said Kay, “like the bastard.”

Ben emerged into the moment’s weight with a three piece suit still draped in clear plastic and a large white paper tote hoisted in his other hand. “Here ya go, Eddie,” he said. “Shoes in the bag.”

“And there’s another surprise for you in the closet,” Beverly added, “once you finish dressing.”

“I don’t know how you keep finding these handsome men,” said Kay. “And here we’re giving Richie Tozier an award. I’ll let you dress, Mr Kaspbrak,” she told him. “Beverly…”

She touched Beverly’s wrist in passing. An apology, you might assume. Beverly smiled smally after her. Then Kay had left the dressing room.

Eddie looked at the women helping Beverly with her hair and make-up. Then he looked at the suit. “Is there, uh, somewhere else I can get changed?”

“Adjoining suite,” said Ben. He jerked his head. “C’mon.” 

Eddie dressed quickly in the other room, with Ben taking up position again on this settee. He politely looked the other way as Eddie traded his black trousers for the red herringbone trousers, the folds so neatly pressed Eddie felt a flash of near hedonist pleasure. He hitched the fabric over the brace then smoothed the minute creases. He looked away from his knees. If he looked too long he would begin to worry the brace showed through the cloth, that if the brace showed then people would notice; but what did it matter if people noticed? Pulling a breath in through his nose, Eddie rolled his shoulders.

“Looks good on you,” said Ben. 

“It’s a brighter red than I would’ve picked. But yeah. It does look good. I’m gonna owe Beverly my entire tax return.”

Ben laughed. “I could tell you what she’ll say about that.” 

He’d an ambiguous country rumble, and it had deepened over the last five years. While Beverly flittered around the globe, Ben split his time with her and at his newer offices in Boulder, Colorado. 

“Well, if you guys get a Robert Gober next year…”

He laughed again and said, “You’d make one of us happy.”

“Not Beverly?”

“She’d prefer Junko Mori. Want me to go ask?”

Loudly, Eddie snorted. Ben took this as encouragement and went to the door. 

“Bev, Robert Gober or Junko Mori?”

“Don’t you dare, Edward!” Beverly hollered. “Losers don’t charge debts!”

“Junko Mori,” said Ben, leaning back in and pulling the door shut.

The brightness of the red had caught Eddie off guard. The greater surprise was the waistcoat and its matching tie: a gold damask, woven of silk, with delicate red accents. The shirt he wore beneath was the one he’d put on under the black suit, a simple white button-down.

He looked at himself in the mirror over this vanity and brushed at his tie, the lines of the suit, the waistcoat buttoned over his torso. Eddie thought of standing next to Richie in this suit, of the blue and silver in Richie’s attire striking against the red and gold of his own. A finger’s heat worked down his legs. 

“You boys all set in there?” called Beverly.

Ben raised his eyebrows at Eddie, who nodded.

In the original dressing room, Beverly had a few carefully positioned curlers sitting in her hair. “Eddie, sit. They’re going to do your make-up now.”

The stylists worked quickly, bouncing from Eddie to Beverly, now powdering his cheeks, now unwinding her curlers, now drawing fine dark lines to accentuate his eyelashes, now teasing out Beverly’s curls so that they framed her like a paintwork of fire. 

Ben had took up Kay’s abandoned post at the vanity. He made quiet jokes to Beverly and now and then asked Eddie how he was doing. When Eddie responded snappily that he didn’t know why he had to have his cheeks blushed, Ben shrugged and said, “It’s those stagelights. They’ll wash you out.”

“Richie didn’t put this much stuff on.”

“Hold on, I have to gloss your lips,” said the younger of the stylists. She gripped his jaw with bone-cracking strength.

“He put on more,” said Beverly. “You’re just used to it. If he doesn’t put on the full drag, you don’t notice anymore.”

Underneath the powder, and thus, he hoped, unseen, Eddie flushed. Richie hadn’t brought his drag queen look to the public; it wasn’t a part of his new, out of the closet routine. Perhaps a handful of times a year he would dress up and Eddie would escort him to a small gay club and they’d shoot the shit with some of the established queens. 

He wondered, looking at his reflection in the vanity’s mirror around Ben’s shoulder, what Richie would think if Eddie were to ask him to do his face too. He wondered if he would be comfortable with such a thing. If he were, as he feared, too boring, too staid, too _Eddie_ to wear a smokey red eye and glittered paint on his lips, if he were too old.

Beverly peeled off the dust cloth with the help of a stylist. Ben stood, an elaborate white gold spun choker in hand, to tenderly clasp it around her long and arching neck. 

She caught Eddie’s eyes in the mirror and grinned. In her silver armor bodice and centurion folded skirts, she said, “So, what d’you think, Kid Kaspbrak?”

He remembered how fearlessly she had strode out to leap into the quarry water, how she’d chopped off all her red hair that summer, the tremble in her jaw as she told them all she’d seen their deaths. They would all have followed her anywhere, their Beverly Marsh, as feral as the rest of them and steel-boned underneath.

At the quarry he had once looked at her spread out under the sunshine in only her underwear, and he had done so not out of adolescent curiosity as to the shape and form of her but a kind of awe. Here was a girl who didn’t care what adults like his mother thought of girls who went around in bikinis and short shorts. He had wondered what it was like to be so brave as Beverly Marsh. 

“You look like a warrior,” said Eddie, almost shy. “Like you kill monsters.”

Beverly’s eyes shone. She smiled at Eddie and she bent over him, seated on the lounging sofa, to kiss his forehead. 

“If you believe it does,” she murmured to his skin.

“If you believe it does,” he echoed in turn. 

Beverly said, “Let’s finish getting you ready, Cinderella,” and she went to the closet to draw out a cane, a beautiful black and gold-vined thing with a red enamel handle.

  
  
  
  


**a bungalow for me and you.**

They’d purchased the bungalow, one and a half stories above a finished basement, five months shy of their wedding in September of 2020. Renovations took most of the winter. Eddie had paid the deposit for the house. Richie had bull-dogged his way into paying for the work to expand the doorways, to add graded ramps to the front of the house and to each story. The safety rails in the master bathroom and the half-baths on the first floor and in the basement.

“I hate it,” Eddie said one night at Richie’s condo, posted on the market but not yet sold. He was scrolling through the photos the architect had sent them of the work in progress. 

“Mm. Well, it’ll look better when it’s not covered in shit.” 

Richie rubbed at his shoulder. They were curled together on the soft, arguably watching reruns of Forensic Files. 

Eddie closed out of his phone and tossed it to the foot of the sofa, where he could pull an absurdly yellow afghan over it with his foot. 

“The ramps,” he said. “It’s a huge waste of money. We’re going to wind up in a one story ranch house in ten years anyway.”

“Could be twenty years.”

“This isn’t joking,” Eddie snapped. “I’m not joking.”

Richie got an arm up under Eddie’s other shoulder and shifted, pulling Eddie’s back flush with his chest. He did this so he could rest his chin on top of Eddie’s head and rub him there with his stubbly chin. 

Eddie had been annoyed enough he might have elbowed Richie in the gut; but there were times too when it softened him, to be manhandled and held tenderly as if even in his ugly flaring temper he were something sweet. So instead he sank into Richie’s muscular softness and let Richie envelop him.

“Sometimes,” Eddie said lowly, “I hate the fucking chair.”

“But it’s so badass.”

“It isn’t badass. Nobody thinks a wheelchair looks badass.”

“Dude, literally everybody at your P.T. place disagrees. You gonna tell Leila her wheelchair sucks a rotten chode? You think she won’t break you in half with her honey ham biceps?”

“Shut up.” He latched on to Richie’s left hand to fiddle with his knobbed fingers. “I’m allowed my own complex god damn emotions about my own disability.”

Richie rubbed his chin harder and said, in his grumbling voice that meant I’m sorry but I’m not going to say it because I still think I’m right about the bigger issue at hand: “Yeah. You are. It just sucks watching you beat yourself up.”

“I’m not beating myself up. I’m saying I hate that fucking chair.”

“Well, I love you,” said Richie. “And I love your feet and your weird, boxy calves and your poison dart cane and that chair. You look like Professor X if he had slutty bed hair.”

“You never wanted to fuck Professor X.”

“Fuck off, everybody wants to fuck the professor. He’s got telepathy. Telekinesis. He can jack you off with his brain.”

Eddie snorted. Richie dropped his head lower. He rested his cheek on Eddie’s shoulder. His lips blushed across Eddie’s throat. 

“Beep-beeping,” Richie murmured. “Tell me. I won’t say anything. It’s okay. Whatever’s going on in your spaghetti and meatballs head.”

Eddie rolled Richie’s wedding ring around his fingers. The metal moved slowly over that warm skin. Fine brown hairs laced Richie’s knuckles. On the underside of the ring, R+E was carved into the white gold just as E+R was carved into the white gold belly of Eddie’s own ring. 

Eddie told him. He tried to tell him. There were things he still did not know how to articulate. It was as if his mother had been right all along when she told Eddie he was too fragile, he was so gentle, he was too sweet and frail a boy for such dangerous things. Those rude children will only get you into trouble. I wish you wouldn’t play with that Tozier boy. He always twists you into those schemes of his. 

The voice that was Sonia’s voice that was Eddie’s voice hiding inside his mother said, “Oh, Eddie, didn’t I tell you? Eddie, didn’t I warn you? Oh, my little baby Eddie, who will take care of you now when you can’t walk anymore? Who will take care of you when you get pneumonia? They had to cut out half your lung, oh, Eddie bear.”

And Richie held him and brushed his fingers against Eddie’s chest and said, “Eddie, you’re the most stubborn asshole I ever met. You can take care of yourself.”

“What if I want you take care of me?”

“I’d cut my dick off for the chance.”

“Well, I like your dick.” 

He turned awkwardly in Richie’s arms so he propped himself over Richie with his hands planted the one on the back of the sofa and the other on Richie’s jutting hip. His shadow kissed along Richie. 

“I don’t want to trap you,” Eddie said. “And I know that’s like. Probably a shitty, politically incorrect thing to think—”

“Dude, it’s your fucking body, you can think whatever the fuck you want about it. I’m just here to worship it. Your body,” Richie added, as if he thought Eddie might have missed this swipe at humor.

“I don’t want you to regret it.” Eddie pressed his brow to Richie’s broad clavicle. “I don’t want you to. To, uh. Regret me. Being with me. When I can’t…”

Richie’s hands cupped his face and lifted his head to look at him. Through his eyelashes, struggling to do even this, Eddie looked at Richie, and Richie’s eyes were black-pupiled and bright behind his glasses. His jaw was taut-drawn. He looked as he might have when he had shouted at IT to save Mike.

“I will never regret you,” said Richie harshly through too many teeth, his thin lips. The silver in his half-grown beard flashed. “I waited my entire life for you, Eddie. Eddie, I would’ve pulled you out of the fucking tomb.”

“What if I run out of—” He didn’t know how to say it. Fear and anger both pretzeled with tooth and fang in Eddie’s chest. He said, “I’m gonna mess it up. You’re gonna hate me.”

Richie softened. He melted so easily under Eddie. Cradling his jaw, his blunt finger tips brushing at the soft skin behind Eddie’s ears, Richie leaned those mere inches to kiss Eddie once on his tightly pinched lips.

“I would’ve died with you,” Richie said into the shivering breath between that kiss and the next one that he hid into the corner of Eddie’s lips. “Eddie, I swear. I’ll never hate you. I want to massage your leg every day for the rest of my life. I wanna sit on your dick in that wheelchair.”

“Jesus Christ, Rich,” said Eddie on an exhale, a laugh or a gust of hysteria.

“I am butt crazy in love with you,” Richie said. “Who fucking cares if you got a lame leg? Do you not remember how you got that shit? It was when you three-sixty no scope launched a javelin through that clown’s face. You saved my life.

“Eddie,” said Richie, “without you, I’d be dead.”

“And what if that’s why you’re here?” said Eddie. He felt it in his face, the frenzy of it. The madness of the question. His brain crawled as though with fire ants, stinging and biting at the meat so that it itched. “What if you’re just—”

Richie kissed him again. He kissed him deeply, wretchedly, so that Eddie arched and his hips met against Richie’s hips, and Richie made a noise like something wet of flesh had torn inside him. 

“I’m no good at this,” Richie said, kissing him again as urgently. “Eddie. I don’t know what’s romantic, I don’t—Eddie, when I walked into that restaurant and I saw you in that stupid polo and your hoodie, I— Honey, if you'd been in a wheelchair then I still would have felt like I got punched in the dick. Do you think I wouldn't love you if you'd been born with a robo-skeleton leg?”

“Shut up.” Eddie pulling at Richie’s shirt. “Shut up.”

“You made that dumbass face,” said Richie dreamily, “and I thought oh, my god. Oh, my god. I get a second chance. I get another fucking shot. I didn’t think I had any more shots at anything. I felt like my life was over.”

“Your life isn’t over,” said Eddie, and he brushed his hand over Richie’s curls and with such great care he took Richie’s glasses from him and he folded the arms and he set the glasses on the coffee table so that when he bent again he could readily kiss each of Richie’s eyelids.

“C’mere,” said Richie.

“I’m here,” said Eddie.

“Not yet you’re not,” said Richie. 

For a time that night he made Eddie feel as if his body were luminous. If Richie would only hold him with his huge hands at the scar on Eddie’s breast or the hard corner of his hip then Eddie could name the things unknown that welled within him. Love, maybe. Happiness. Longing: still, somehow. There were days, many of them, when he was satisfied with his body without needing Richie to love him for it. There were days he thought he was failing or weak to want that reassurance of Richie. No matter. Richie was there anyway, as if he'd never gone.

  
  
  
  


**introducing richard tozier.**

He withdrew the few sheets of note paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Behind the podium Eddie rested his knee against the frame of it. His cane balanced against his inner thigh.

“Thank you, Beverly.” 

He said it too close to the microphone. His voice registered, deep. Eddie’s nape burned under the hot lights. 

“Um, as Miss Marsh said, I’m Edward Kaspbrak. I’m Richie’s husband. Richie Tozier.”

Would he have stumbled so in a meeting at work? No, but then TMZ and People magazine didn’t much care about what went on in insurance offices. His lawyer had made sure of that. 

He glanced to Richie. From the stage, rather than the wing, sitting in the front row to the side, Richie was visible: his face still with his jaw minutely slack. The little sickness tightening in Eddie's belly, lanced.

“The first time I met Richie, he was wearing a Three’s Company t-shirt and neon pink Hawai’ian print shorts,” said Eddie. 

Richie lit up like a bowling alley on glow in the dark night. His laugh drowned out any others. Eddie smiled. 

“That was almost forty years ago,” said Eddie. He moued his lips and shrugged. The unspeakable travesties of time, he said with his full-body frown. “I’m unhappy to report his understanding of fashion hasn’t evolved.” Remember Bev, he leaned into the microphone to say: “Much like his comedy.”

Richie held his hands up in front of his face. His entire body shook. There were other people in the room, and they were laughing too; he could make out Beverly’s distinctive near yelp. Eddie watched Richie.

“We share a closet. Maybe it’s more of a demilitarized zone. We have an agreement. If any of his novelty Taco Bell t-shirts wind up on my side of the closet, then I get to burn it, and if any of my Dolce & Gabanna loafers wind up on his side then he has to have them cleaned.

“But he’s getting better,” said Eddie, as Richie made a show of folding his arms and trying to scowl. “He is! You are. Now he buys his Hawai’ian shirts from Ralph Lauren. Which is…” He paused. “Better.”

Richie tunneled his hands around his mouth. “You want Givenchy?” he hollered. “Givenchy Hawai’ian?”

“Stop buying Hawai’ian shirts!” said Eddie. “And bowling shirts, and hoodies. The fucking hoodies. He has a Top Ramen hoodie and he wears it every Friday. I have to look at him wearing this, every Friday. He wears it to bed.

“Half his socks have holes in them, and he hides them from me so I can’t throw them away. He says he doesn’t want to hurt the socks’ feelings. This is Richie Tozier. This is the man you’re honoring tonight. He still pronounces Moschino as Mosh-ino.”

“It’s funny!” Richie shouted.

“It’s a little funny,” Eddie admitted. “There. Does that make you happy? Now they’ve got me on tape saying Mosh-ino is funny.”

Richie flirted his hand in a oh do go one sort of way and laughed at Eddie’s expression. Eddie pulled in a hard breath. His back twinged.

“But I’m not just here to make fun of my husband,” said Eddie. He fumbled with the notes, the notes he hadn’t referenced yet. He’d forgotten the cameras until he mentioned them. 

“I, uh.” He cleared his throat and glanced at last to the crowd. “I wanted to make fun of him. But I also wanted to say that, uh, I love all his Looney Tunes boxers. I love his Muppets hoodies. I love his jeans with the hole in the butt that he’s had for the last seven years. They don’t even stay up anymore, Rich.”

Richie had covered his mouth with a hand. The wedding band on his ring finger gleamed. His brow had crinkled; his face, rumpled. 

I love you, Eddie thought. I didn’t know it when we were kids. And I didn’t know it at the reunion, or even after, when you were with me at the hospital. But I love you now. Sometimes it hurt in his chest to think of how much he loved Richie. His bones trembled with it. The cartilaginous flesh of his face itched with it. He loved the shape of Richie and the heft of him, he loved Richie’s big hands; he loved the indelicate bark of Richie’s laugh and even the shit that spewed out of his mouth. He loved the sweat stink of Richie’s body and the scratch of his hair and the way that Richie tucked his cold feet into the bends of Eddie’s knees. 

He said none of these things. How could he have explained them? How could Eddie have held the attention of every person in this room and tell them in such a way that they would know the truth that Edward Kaspbrak loved Richard Tozier? 

The boyfriend he had after the divorce, Hugh, he’d known the truth. He’d spat it at Eddie. “You’re such an asshole,” Hugh had snapped. “Why do you even bother coming over if you’re going to pick up the phone the minute Dick calls?”

“He’s my friend, Hugh!” Eddie had protested. His voice came out soft, placating. “It’s just a text.”

“It’s an hour of texting while I’m trying to talk with you.”

“I’m not going to break up with my friends for you.”

“That’s not what I want,” Hugh had said. “I just wish you’d love me the way you love him.”

It stung Eddie more to think of Hugh and Eddie’s shortcomings with him than it did to remember the decade of his marriage to Myra. How could he explain this to anyone in the room, anyone who wasn’t Ben or Beverly or Richie? 

He said, “Because it doesn’t matter what Richie wears. His style isn’t for everyone. And maybe he’s been dressing better.” He glanced at the notes again. “But uh, whether he’s in board shorts and a Star Wars button-down—”

A roll of laughter greeted this. Eddie looked at Richie, who looked back at him: Richie who did understand.

“Or a pair of Mosh-ino boots,” said Eddie. “A Beverly Marsh original or that Menudo shirt with the ketchup stain that won’t come out. He’s still Richie Tozier. He’s who he is. And uh, I wouldn’t want him to change.”

Richie’s hand slid to his chin. The look of him had softened so. I love you, said Richie with the lopsided twist of his lips and the way that he straightened out his ring finger, to better show that band.

“I don’t think any of us want him to change,” said Eddie. “He wouldn’t be Rich Tozier if he did. So, uh, here he is. Your Man of Style. Richie.”

There was applause somewhere. There was Beverly, cheering. And there was Richie, stepping up onto the stage and coming to Eddie, who held an arm out to him and held him and kissed him softly on the cheek turned away from the audience.

“You sentimental bastard,” Richie murmured.

“Choke on it,” said Eddie, and he pressed his nose longingly to Richie’s cheek before he stepped away and took his cane up again to leave Richie at last in the spotlight, blinking and bright and born to it.


	3. Chapter 3

**ONTD Original: Who the F**k is Edward Kaspbrak**

10/19/2022 7:15PM  
posted by @kaymccallme

So if you didn’t tune in last night to the InStyle Awards, congratulations on your good taste, unless you did it as protest against the WNBA, in which case fuck you. But for those of us eating cheetos out of the bag in our sweats, this is a capital e Event, or at least it was this year, because the Man of Style for 2022 was _Rich effing Tozier_. 

That’s right, folks, fart king Rich Tozier is our newly crowned Man of Style, the most fashionable man in the entertainment industry. Who can forget such stylish moments as that time he wore an unbuttoned flannel over a plaid shirt? Or the jeans with the mac n cheese stain? What about that time he showed us how to barf into a take-out box live on Conan? 

Kay McCall. Baby. Angel. My inspiration. You worked nine years as an editor at Vogue Italia. Your blog on fashion and politics is Gospel. This is your pick for Man of Style?

But forget Rich Tozier for a second. Forget that Beverly Marsh, that’s right, @zzzlilla’s own Sexy Redheaded Queen, was supposed to introduce him. Instead she introduced this bombshell:

> [Very clear photo of a man in a red suit standing on-stage. The angle is from the side. He’s shown in profile, smiling. A long dimple shows in his bearded cheek.]

This is Edward Kaspbrak, Rich Tozier’s elusive husband. You know: the one with the restraining order against TMZ? The husband nobody’s been able to dig up? That one.

**( Strap in, darlink, ‘cause it’s time for ONTD Investigates.)**

But first, a little more set-up’s due. 

THE TIMELINE (PRE-BOMB DROP): 

**May 2016:** Rich Tozier has what historians will call The Chicago Clock-Out. Then he just disappears for a month.  
**June 2016:** Rich Tozier cancels the rest of the America! I’m In You tour. ONTD throws a party.  
**January 2017:** Rich Tozier debuts a new set on Late Night with Seth Meyers, “New Year New Me.” He comes out as gay. ONTD has a breakdown.  
**August 2017:** Rich Tozier starts a new, smaller tour, Taking the Trash Out. His jokes are allegedly funnier. He gets a Netflix deal.  
**2018:** The tour’s expanded. Rich gets a gig on the new Kerry Washington medical drama, New Block. (Kerry says he’s hilarious on set.) Rich Tozier finally follows people on Twitter: Bill Denbrough, Beverly Marsh, Ben Hanscom, and a couple other randos… among them, a blank account called e_f_kaspbrak_76. Make a note of that one.  
**July 2019:** Rich Tozier announces at a show that he has a boyfriend. ONTD debates. TMZ debates. Beverly Marsh has no comment. Kerry says Rich’s boyfriend isn’t who you’d expect Rich to date.  
**2020:** New Block airs its second season. Rich Tozier gets nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy at the Golden Globes. (He loses.) No Emmy noms. Kerry wins for Best Actress in a Comedy at the Golden Globes, go girl!  
**February 2021:** TMZ publishes a photo of Rich Tozier’s marriage license!!!!!  
**Later in February 2021:** Rich Tozier and husband sue TMZ.  
**August 2021:** Rich Tozier’s husband wins a restraining order against TMZ. This judgment is extended in November to cover several other gossip mags and rags.  
**October 18, 2022:** THE BOMB DROPS: Edward Kaspbrak, baby! (Warning: shaky phone recording, Youtube.) 

Enough foreplay, you say, get to the real shit. 

_Who the f**k is Edward Kaspbrak?_

1) So thanks to the lawsuit, and the restraining order, TMZ had to take down that pesky marriage license. But not to fear! The super-sleuths/home invaders at r/xoxogossipgrrrrrl saved the important deets: On February 12, 2021, Richard Phineas Tozier (DOB: March 7, 1976) married Edward Francis Kaspbrak (DOB: September 3, 1976) with Stanley Uris and Beverly Marsh as witnesses.

Hmm… e_f_kaspbrak_76… 

(You might wonder why nobody picked up on this sooner. Simple: the weekend u/genevievenookcrossing posted the text of the wedding license, Chris Pratt was filmed calling an extra (TW SLURS) a slut dyke, as a “joke.” This set off the Great Christopher Reckoning of Spring 2021.) 

  
  


2) Twitter user jungkookiecrumble posted this photo in July 2021 of Rich and a mysterious man eating at Parson’s in Chicago.

> SOLO ALBUM 03/2023 !!!! PREORDER 4 BB  
>  @jungkookiecrumble
> 
> ummm so this gross comedian my bro @dylanstreamsC0DTV loves is out here at parson’s having lunch with like An Actual Babe???? dudes got a pimp cane istg OMG HE JUST LICKED HIS THUMB AND HES WIPING THE OTHER DUDE’S MOUTH??? Wtf dylan come get your mans man lmfaooo

Dude’s got his tongue peeking out! Wiping at Rich with his thumb! What the fuck!

And just for fun:

> LIVE ON TWITCH @ 7:30PM  
>  @dylanstreamsC0DTV 
> 
> Wait Richie’s gay?
> 
>   
> 
> 
> stan a-pink revival  
>  @girlgangbangbang
> 
> sksksksks cookie u brothers dumb as hell

  
  


3) This tweet from Rich Tozier of a man in a white shirt glowering over him on a beach (the sun is conveniently behind the guy’s head):

> kerry washington’s #1 hype man  
>  @theTrashmouthDick
> 
> I come to Malibu for the simple pleasures. The sun, the sand, the surf, the hubby slapping cold sunscreen on my chest. Babe, we all know the chest hair deflects the sun.

And a screencap of e_f_kaspbrak_76’s reply:

> e_f  
>  @e_f_kaspbrak_76
> 
> Do you have any idea how deadly skin cancer is? You should wear sunscreen DAILY not just when we’re at the beach! And the spray stuff does not count. I’m getting you real SPF.

e_f_kaspbrak_76 locked his account after this tweet racked up 145 likes, 7 replies, and 2 retweets. He’s at least added a pfp: a Bugatti Royale showroom photo. 

  
  


4) A couple nights ago some blurry nighttime photos showed up on some of the Darque Gossip Forums of Rich and a hottie with a cane. After a couple hours searching Reddit I found u/genevievenookcrossing’s post and got in touch with her. Turns out Gen’s pretty computer savvy and she’s known who Edward Kaspbrak was all along. But unlike the rest of us, she didn’t want to blow his spot up. It wasn’t until early this morning after the InStyle Awards that she finally gave me some of those sweet, sweet tapioca pearls:

\- Edward Kaspbrak is 46.  
\- He was born in Derry, Maine, same as Rich Tozier. Childhood friends??  
\- He works in insurance. (Gen says he’s a “risk analyst,” so you figure it out.)  
\- They live in Chicago.  
\- He’s won, like, thirty awards in his weird-ass insurance field.  
\- He has a LinkedIn profile but you can’t search it anymore. Gen reports there were several very hilarious comments on his page at one time from angry coworkers. Apparently Mr Kaspbrak is “controversial” in the workplace and “a poor team-player.”  
\- He was in a serious accident in 2016 (around the same time Rich vanished from the comedy scene) and now he uses a cane and a wheelchair.  
\- He is, grotesquely, in love with Rich Tozier.  
\- His lawyer _does not fuck around_ so if this post vanishes, or I vanish, then @zzzlilla, I want you to find Kay McCall and I want you to tell her I loved her even after that atrocious double spread of Gucci in Vogue Italia April 2017.

  
  


So there he is, Edward Kaspbrak: Richard Tozier’s lawfully wedded husband. I don’t think we’ll ever know how Rich “banned from Grindr” Tozier landed this babe but good on him for whatever dark sorceries he used. And congrats on the Man of Style Award or whatever. 

Kay, seriously? 

Sources: **1 **, **2 **, **3 **, **4** , just click on all the links damn ************

********

********

_ONTD, have you ever sued TMZ for breaching your privacy?_

  
  
**the comic who shagged me.**

The Losers had a private group page on Facebook; by unanimous vote Patty, the Honorary Loser, was permitted.

A week or so after Richie’s agent called to inform him of the Man of Style Award, Beverly posted a photo of herself, hair a mess, kids’ heart-shaped sunglasses sticking out over her nose, t-shirt with no bra. She’d captioned the photo GUESS WHOSE INTRODUCING THE TRASHMOUTH AT INSTYLE AWARDS.

Patty replied with *who’s, Beverly posted three yellow smiley faces and one knife, and Patty finished off the conversation with a brown emoji blowing a kiss.

Eddie found this conversation incomprehensible. He told Richie so. He did this by shoving his phone in Richie’s face and saying, “What the fuck do the smiley faces mean?”

They were on the double-wide, white pleather couch in the den, Richie’s absurdly long legs folded on top of Eddie’s shins. Richie was fitted to the crease of the couch, Eddie on the outside. One of the crocheted yellow afghans, a blanket Eddie had inexpertly crafted himself during his long recovery, was beneath them. Their shoulders rubbed. Richie had a laptop, unplugged, propped on his thighs. He was nominally punching up a script for the spring return of New Block’s fifth season, workshopping the jokes. He’d lapsed into staring at the screen and idly rubbing his bare feet along Eddie’s legs, ruffling the dark hairs the wrong way then smoothing them then running them counter again. Eddie was half-hard in his belted shorts from the stroking, the irritating rush against the grain, the scrape of Richie’s heels.

Richie squinted at the phone. His eyebrows crumpled then smoothed. He laughed. His laughter shook Eddie. 

“Oh, shit,” said Richie. “Fuck me, dude. She’s going to light me on fire on-stage. Ah, fuck. Jesus. They couldn’t get Kerry?”

“Shut up, I don’t care about that,” said Eddie. “Can you please tell me what the fuck these stupid little smileys mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Richie, “why the hell would I know what anything means? What does the moon mean? What does Elon Musk mean? Why do I get diarrhea every time I eat chili?”

“Because you’re a pussy,” said Eddie, frowning at his phone again. “Your stomach’s a pussy too.”

“You’re such a dillweed.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say dillweed?”

“Yeah, asshole,” said Richie, “it’s called English. Look it up.”

“Look your ass up.”

“I’ll look up your ass.”

Eddie put his phone flat against his own face to try to stop the smile; all it did was make his laugh sound more nasal. 

Richie shoved his laptop down the couch and rolled half on top of Eddie. His left knee fitted between Eddie’s thighs. “Hey, Eddie.”

“What do you want, Richie.” 

He was trying to fight the smile, still lingering. His lips trembled with it. Richie tucked a little, puckered kiss into the twitching corner of Eddie’s mouth, then another kiss into the long dimpling line of his scarred cheek.

“You ever wanna go spelunking?”

“Get off!”

“You first.”

Eddie beat at him with his phone until Richie growled and called him a turd and a weasel and hissed at him, mostly laughter, a smudging of real annoyance, his eyes bright and narrowed behind his glasses. That was when Eddie put a hand on Richie’s big shoulder with its sharp knob and shoved him into the crease of the couch.

“Dick,” said Richie.

“Rich,” murmured Eddie, leaning closer, his phone dropped behind him, his hand resting on the hard muscle, soft fat swell of Richie’s pectoral muscle. Richie’s heart thumped strong beneath Eddie’s fingers.

Richie had never untangled his leg from its spot between Eddie’s. Now he stretched, brutely shoving his right leg beneath Eddie’s left so that they sandwiched each other. Eddie’s cock was slowly filling. The hairs of his legs stood on end. Richie had worn a t-shirt and lounge pants, his usual puttering around the house ‘fit. 

Deliberately, Eddie rubbed his thigh against Richie’s dick, feeling for the faint early movements of an erection, stirring. For all his crude talk, Richie was always slower to rise than Eddie.

Richie slimmed one broad hand down the length of Eddie’s back. His fingers dug in between a selection of vertebrae, low on the spine. To the tune of I’m a little teapot thought Eddie: here is my tailbone, here is my ass. He sang it to Richie. Richie laughed, his head pushing back. His neck arched. Eddie bit the apple, tugging in his throat. Richie made a little sound, a tease of a gasp that clicked off his tongue. Richie did grab at his ass then. His dick pushed at Eddie’s leg. 

“You should be nicer to me,” he said, swallowing, as Eddie licked over that knob in his throat though it bobbed and pulled. 

“I’m nice to you.” Eddie ground his dick along Richie’s too thick thigh. His briefs, his shorts, they chafed. He liked it. The buckle pinched. He liked that too. “I’m always nice to you.”

“You’re an asshole,” said Richie. He tensed that thigh. Eddie stuttered a breath. “You’re a little dickweasel.”

Eddie got his fingers curled in Richie’s hair. He’d forgotten his phone. Tightening his grip, Eddie pulled on that fistful of collars. Richie squirmed. It was not dissimilar to riding bronco, Eddie supposed, or weathering an earthquake. 

A muscle pulled in Eddie’s face. His hip had flashed hot. Richie bound his arms around Eddie and turned them around so that Eddie lay flushed beneath him.

They kissed longly, wetly, the sort of kiss that made quiet sounds, the slickness of saliva, the half-breaths, the low rumbling in chests as they brushed against each other in passing motions that then lingered. Richie slipped a hand low, unbuckling Eddie’s belt. 

“You like me mean,” said Eddie. “You like it when I bully you.”

Richie got his hand fitted into that private, dark space. He stroked Eddie in that big palm of his. Eddie bit his lip and turned his head away, breathing hard through his nose. He tried not to kick.

Richie nipped lightly at Eddie’s jaw. “What was that? Huh? Big man?” He pulled on Eddie’s dick again, the movement abortive thanks to the shorts still at his hips, the belt hardly loosened. “Big, mean man? Gonna push me around, Eds?”

Eddie’s hands felt around Richie’s shoulders. He grabbed at them. Richie trembled all over when Eddie made fists around Richie’s shoulders and pushed, pulled, pushed again. Richie’s hips moved in rhythm.

“Good boy,” said Eddie. He pulled and Richie ground his dick against Eddie’s lap, his breath coming hot and damp into the hollow of Eddie’s neck. “That’s a really good boy, Richie.”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Richie groaned and ground again, stretching so he could rub harder. Pleasure moved atomically through Eddie’s groin. His leg jerked.

Something clattered loudly to the ground and Richie said again, “Oh, fuck,” and then, “My laptop! Shit!” and Eddie fell back laughing, pulling at Richie’s shoulders so even in despair he kept moving, moving against Eddie, his chest blocking out the light, black curls against his cheeks, his mouth flashing as he complained and Eddie said, “Mm-hm. Yeah, that sucks. Well, you should’ve put it away.”

“What, like I knew you were going to maul me?”

“Dude, I’ve been hard for like an hour,” said Eddie.

“Yeah?” Richie looked pleased. It made him boyish, how his nose wrinkled at the tip and his smile went shy and his ears, somehow, seemed to perk. 

“You were petting my legs.”

“That do it for you?”

Eddie felt his ears coloring. He frowned severely. Richie’s grin widened to Cheshire proportions. 

“You do it for me,” Eddie grumbled.

“Yeah, baby,” said Richie. “Got you fancying a shag, do I? Oh, Eddie, baby, be- _have_.”

“Don’t you fucking drag Austin Powers into this.”

“Mm,” Richie crooned, still putting on the voice, “well, if it’s a drag you want…” He yanked the belt out – Eddie arched, surprised, at the rush of it over his ass – and tossed it aside. “Well I fancy a look at the London Underground. Why don’t I drag you out of these rags?”

“If you rip my shorts, I’ll smother you.”

“Yeah, baby!” said Richie, “yeah!” and he dragged Eddie’s shorts and briefs off him in a flashy, full body move that sent Richie toppling off the couch.

  
  
**what you know to be real.**

The invitations arrived in May of 2018, with a date for early December. Even knowing some of the how and little of the why, Eddie blinked owl-like at the neat hand-lettered _Michael Hanlon and William Denborough cordially invite you…_ , each stroke executed in black ink on the thin paper. So utterly unlike the heavy invitations Eddie had agreed to put out for the wedding with Myra, to Myra. The prepositions moved under his feet so he stumbled with them. 

“I don’t know that you’d want me there,” said Hugh over the phone that afternoon. 

Eddie had stayed late at the office to work on the Patel-Long portfolio for the Chester account. 

“Why wouldn’t I want you there? You’re my boyfriend.” As he said it he winced. 

Hugh sighed as if he’d heard the wince or tasted the reasoning for it. “I don’t know, Eddie. Why would you want me there in the first place?”

The sun was setting slowly across the district, something that could not be tracked through the towering buildings that lined either side of the broad road, except through the general reddening of the sky above. If Eddie craned his head just so then he could make out the orange or violet underlined cirrus clouding.

“Well, I get a plus one,” said Eddie. “All my friends know about you. You’ve met Bev and Richie.”

“Right,” said Hugh, “Richie.”

“They’d all be happy to meet you. And I’ve known Mike and Bill since we were kids. It would mean a lot to me to have you there.”

“Remember when you went home with me for Thanksgiving last year? And you hated it.”

“I didn’t hate it.”

“You’re a great liar,” Hugh agreed. “You put on your polite Edward Kaspbrak speaking work voice and everybody thought you were great, but Edward, please, do you think I couldn’t tell?”

“It was a new experience and new people,” Eddie said, “I don’t do big family gatherings, but I went. I did go, Hugh. And I tried and it’s not fair to say I hated it. Your mom was … great. The dinner was great. Everything was great.”

“Oh, well, if it was _great_.”

“Hugh…” Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. His nails dug into the skin. “Look. They’re not doing a rehearsal dinner. They’re not doing twenty scheduled events. It’s a small wedding, it’s Friday. It’s just Mike and Bill and our friends and I just want you to be there. With me.” 

Hugh was silent for a time. Eddie could hear wind chimes. So Hugh was out on the balcony of his apartment, probably smoking, looking over the courtyard. Eddie put away his irritation. It didn’t matter if Hugh smoked the occasional cigarette in his own home. Stop being your mother, he thought sharply.

“Fine,” said Hugh. “But only so Richard doesn’t sweep you off your feet.”

Eddie barked. “That joke’s still funny. But if you keep bringing it up it’s going to get annoying.”

“The guy’s like a dog panting after you.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie, “who wouldn’t want a cripple in a chair?”

Hugh said, “You won’t have to use the chair forever,” ever optimistic. 

A sour thing swelled Eddie’s tongue. He said, “Listen, how about we meet for dinner tomorrow? We can talk about it some more.”

“Italian?”

“No,” said Eddie, a reflex. “How about that new Indian place a couple blocks from your place?”

Hugh disliked lamb and curry but he agreed anyway. He agreed too to the wedding, and so December 7th, 2018, Hugh was there alongside Eddie. They sat in the first pew with Ben to Hugh’s left and Richie to Eddie’s right, while in the second pew, Stan and Patty sat with their two foster girls, Naomi and Joan. 

Mike had, by shared account, fallen in love with the small ranch-style church in dry, rural Texas on his aimless wander around the continental USA, and Bill had not taken much to convince. The church was so narrow it only permitted three pews, stacked one behind the other. 

Beverly, in a finely fitted blouse and blazer over flaring black trousers, performed the service. The real work would be done at the courthouse in a matter of hours with all the Losers to witness. Eddie had expected a remark from Hugh about this exclusion, but Hugh had simply hummed when Eddie told him and continued scrolling through his Instagram. For a moment, unexplained, Eddie had felt a stab of annoyance. Why wasn’t he angry? Why didn’t he care?

In the church, as Bill carefully spilled out his vows, Richie pressed his thigh alongside Eddie’s and flashed a silver-slim smile at him when he dared look up. It was a fond smile. It was a smile that said yes, there’s Bill. We love him.

Eddie gave a pinched thing in return. He was afraid of what his lips might say. Richie winked. It pulled his left eye into a rumple.

Hugh’s hand touched Eddie’s left knee, the knee nearest to Hugh. He did this gently. Eddie glanced to that hand, known. The fingers were long, spindly, pale and delicately knuckled. All these things defined Hugh. A fearful sensation of the blasphemer hooked into the tender flesh of Eddie’s nape. Against his leg, Richie’s thigh rested warm and thickly made. 

They held the reception in the bricked and spacious back-door patio of an upscale barbecue joint a half hour from the courthouse, itself an hour’s drive from the little church built of sandstone and desert-smoothed boards of ponderosa pine. There friends of Mike’s and of Bill’s joined them as well a few extended Hanlon family members who’d made the trip from Pennsylvania or South Carolina. A Denborough aunt had flown in from Scotland, a few cousins from outside D.C.

It was a curious thing, the way Derry had ate at families. Only Stan could claim a direct living relative, stern Rabbi Donald Uris having survived two long-separated bouts with cancer. 

“We’re having another ceremony tomorrow,” Mike told Eddie, Eddie and Stan who were at a table beneath the odd shadow of a towering saguaro planted in one corner of the yard as decoration. Stan had the younger of the two girls dozing against his chest. 

Mike went on: “For the family.”

The sun had made to settle, there in the west. Evening came to the arid places unlike how it moved between the towers and facades of New York City. A profusion of colors deepened in fractions with the imperceptible movement of the Earth. 

Stan nodded at Mike. To Eddie he said, “Patty and I held a religious ceremony with our families. Then we did a different ceremony with friends the next weekend. It was easier.” He twitched two fingers together, to dismiss it.

“So tell us some more about Hugh.”

Eddie snorted into his wine glass. “Dude, this is your wedding.”

“Yeah, and I want gossip,” Mike said, laughing. “Where’d he walk off to anyway?”

“Ah, he went inside to, um.” Eddie gestured vaguely with the glass. “Check something, I think. Or get a refill. But Mike, you and Bill? I mean, I’m happy for you guys. But it’s only been, like.” He tried to think.

Stan said dryly, “Thirty years,” sotto voce. He’d gone without wine or spirits, electing to stick to water while Patty nursed a glass of champagne. He directed his comment to his glass. 

Mike said, “Yeah.”

Eddie tried again to think. “Jesus,” he said. “How much have I had to drink?”

Stan smiled, a flash of movement across his long features. Joan grumbled and turned her face the other way. Her dusky cheek showed a suggestion of a flush. Some of those thick black curls had tugged out of her two carefully shaped buns. Stan’s hand smoothed down her back. She made more grumbling.

“I need to take care of her,” said Stan. “You can’t smell it yet. You will.”

Hoisting her into his arm, he pushed his chair back. The legs scraped along the bricks. Joan started and blinked blearily at Mike.

“Hello, Joan,” said Mike gravely.

“Hi, Joan,” said Eddie.

She looked between the two of them and then turned her face into Stan’s shoulder. Stan made a gesture to Patty, across the yard with Naomi and one of Mike’s distant cousins who’d brought her own, older girls. Patty nodded without breaking conversation. 

“It’s nice they’re getting their kids,” said Mike after Stan had left.

“Hm?”

“You noticed, right?” said Mike. “When you leave Derry.” He scrubbed at his right eye. He’d unbuttoned his jacket. Somewhere between the courthouse and the reception he’d lost the waistcoat. “I didn’t mean to be prying but I checked out the statistics on people who leave Derry. Census records. You know, that stuff.”

“You can’t have kids,” said Eddie. 

Mike looked at him. He nodded once. 

“Well,” Eddie said, turning the wine glass in his hands, “that was never really a concern with Myra. I’m guessing with, uh, Audra…”

At this Mike laughed. When he laughed the worrisome lines that crowded his eyes eased. With his newer hairstyle, something Eddie understood was called a fade, and that low and rasping laugh, Mike looked as though he were the Mike who hadn’t stayed in Derry. But Mike had stayed. 

“It was a surprise to me too,” Mike admitted. The smile lingered, tugging at the right corner of his mouth so his cheek crumpled appealingly under his light beard. “Listen, I hadn’t seen Bill in person in… Well, you know. And I would never have thought I’d ever felt about him when we were kids the way that I…”

He looked across the patio to where Bill was dancing with Beverly, the two of them joking at each other under the crooning Sinatra that played from speakers planted behind the decorative cacti. Eddie followed his gaze. He wondered idly where Richie had gone to.

“Sometimes I think it just hits you,” Mike said. His fingers plucked at his own glass, a whiskey tumbler with ice nearly melted.

Eddie turned from Beverly and Bill laughing at one another to study Mike. He’d a smile playing at his face, a smile like the sort of smile you hoped someone would have when they looked at you. In the raw meat of you did you hope for this thing. 

He’d clasped Myra’s hands in his own at their wedding. He had lifted the veil mindful of the delicate white beading. This veil was to be packed in a white box on a bed of white tissue and put on the shelf at the top of their bedroom closet. They had kissed once chastely at the altar. Her fingers had trembled against his palms. His own hands were steady. It had not seemed the occasion for a show of strong feeling. Some aspect of a church impressed this upon him. 

“Even when you’re not looking for it,” Mike said, “it comes in the room and sneaks up on you. We could’ve waited a little longer after the divorce, but.” He looked again at Eddie and gave him that wry smile, that smile that said many things. “I got tired of waiting for good things to happen to me.”

“Hey, Mike!” Bill shouted. He was red-cheeked and shining-faced. He held his hand out to Mike and beckoned. Beverly, giggling, held Bill up with her shoulder. “Bev says, Bev says you owe her a dance-off. For my—” He broke off laughing.

“For his hand!” Beverly shouted, then she too convulsed with laughter.

Mike rose. “You want to take me on, Miss Marsh?”

Pulling her face, Beverly dipped into a gesture half-bow, half-curtsy. “Whatever you dish, I can take it.” One of the few waiters passed. She snagged a glass of champagne off the tray and drained it.

From his conversation with Bill’s aunt, Ben came hurriedly striding to take the glass from her hand. 

“Thanks, babe,” said Bev in a low voice. Unmistakably she fought off a belch.

Eddie pressed his crumpled napkin to his mouth then gave up and threw his head back to laugh. He clapped his hand over the wine glass. Naomi, playing with the older girls, stopped to clap and bounce and cheer along with her new playmates. Their patent shoes gleamed in the twinkling lights strung across the patio, lights that now turned on in accordance with a switch somewhere flipped. 

The door to the restaurant swung open. Eddie paid little attention to it. He was trying not to aspirate watching Beverly and Mike inevitably collapsing against each other into a swooping line of dance. Someone pulled a chair out from the table. 

“Hey, Stan.”

Richie made a buzzer sound. He plopped into the chair next to Eddie. “I’m sorry, Mr Kaspbrak, but…” Here he paused and looked severely through his glasses at Eddie. “You’ve named the wrong Jew.”

Eddie flicked the crumpled napkin at Richie. Richie grinned and caught it out of the air. He had a sly way of grinning, even as he showed all his teeth. If you wanted to know Tozier’s little joke, then sweetheart, you had better play along.

“You look like an alligator.”

“Well, it’s better than a frog.” The twinkling lights teased along his glasses. They slung along the bottom curves. He studied Bev and Mike, now swaying together, their heads pressed close, Mike’s back a steep hillock. 

“Bev said I’d grow into my looks. Whaddaya think?”

Eddie glanced. His tongue pressed sharp between his teeth. He’d a cutting edge turned out and malicious intent. 

As he had once in the overgrown weed grass, sewer muck soaking their clothes, Richie framed his face in his hands and cheesed, jaw stuck out, his eyes half to a cross. He was hairier now than at thirteen and taller, too. His shoulders had thickened. All of him had thickened. 

The summer before Sonia had dragged Eddie out of Derry, Richie was sixteen and Eddie fifteen. Richie grew an inch a day. So it seemed. His shins ached. He wore out all his shoes. You could see the bones of his face through his skin. The line of his jaw.

“Where did you go?” Eddie said. 

He hadn’t seen much of Richie since the courthouse and the opening toasts at the reception. There was a sting to that. A thought reminiscent of that summer: it’s supposed to be you and me. E and R. Which summer? _Hey, look out, here comes the Emergency Room: Eddie and Richie, Richie and Eddie,_ Eddie complaining that Richie had basically pulled that joke out of his dickhole. Richie waggled his glasses and said, “I’ll take ya to the E.R., Eddie, I’ll get ya on the table, Doctah K.”

Those framing hands dropped. Richie folded his arms and leaned back in the chair. The front legs rose then clicked against the brick. He did it again.

“I was schmoozing the wait staff,” Richie said. He rocked, rocked again. He’d braced his foot against the table’s central stand. “You know, if you really suck up to those guys, I mean you really get down on one knee, they cut the syrup out of your drinks.” His knee jigged. “Your boyfriend’s a big fan, by the way.”

Eddie, looking at Richie, felt as if he’d taken a bad step off a curb, not knowing the curb was there. Richie’s tie was undone. He’d wadded it into his trouser pocket. The red silk peeked out of it, near his hip. He’d unlatched the top two buttons of his shirt. Some dark curls of hair showed, matted beneath his white undershirt. Eddie had forgotten Hugh.

“Hugh doesn’t watch comedy,” said Eddie. He said it in a funny voice. Richie ought to have laughed.

“Re-a-lly.” Richie unwound his arms. He stretched them behind his chair. One large hand dangled a scant couple inches shy of Eddie’s stiff-set shoulder. “’Cause he’s got a great sense of humor. You didn’t know? Aw, c’mon, Kaspbrak. You must’ve heard him working on his lines sometimes, back at the ol’ corral.”

The old wariness came across Eddie. It brought a flash of temper along. That look on Richie’s face, faux-sincere, something mean in the eyes, made the skin along Eddie’s back pull tight like the hackles of a dog, rising. 

Mike’s laugh rolled over them.

“Get me another drink,” said Eddie.

The chair fell forward on all feet. Richie looked with his mouth rumpled on the one end at Eddie. “What?”

“You’re being a dick.” Eddie gestured with his near emptied glass. “And clearly you want me to be a dick back at you. And I don’t know why and you know what, I don’t want to know why you’re being a dick. I want another glass of wine. To celebrate the wedding.”

Richie looked at him a while, too long. Then the clenching of his jaw eased. Under the purpling sky and the delicate white LED lights strung across the yard, he was in expression and form continuous with the sixteen year old boy who had looked at Eddie across Eddie’s bed, that one night. 

“You’re going away.” Richie said it flatly.

“It’s not like it’s my choice.” Too many emotions had thundered in Eddie’s thin chest. They made him teary, furious. He’d wanted to hit Richie. “My mom got a job in a Buffalo, and it’s not like there’s a whole lot left of Dad’s money.”

“Dude, whatever.” Richie’s shoulders hunched. He wore flannel habitually even in the burgeoning summer humidity. His chucks were dirt-smeared. “You could’ve fucking asked if you could stay with somebody.”

“Oh, grow up, Richie,” he’d snapped. “As if Mom would leave me in Derry. What, am I supposed to live on the farm with Mike? You _know_ my mom.”

Richie glared fixedly at him, jaw a knobbed line. “You could stay with Went and Maggie.”

At that Eddie had laughed. It wasn’t nice of him to have laughed at that, but it came bursting out of him anyway.

“She’d be happier if I got tuberculosis,” said Eddie. “Your parents have signs for _Clinton_. And she hates you, you know that, you had to climb the tree to even get up here.”

“So you’re not even gonna try?” Richie demanded. “You’re just going to do what she wants? What the fuck, Eddie, you kicked that dumbass clown in the face and—”

“Shut up,” Eddie said. “Shut up.”

“You did,” Richie said loudly over him, “and now you’re being a fucking pussy—”

“Fuck you, Richie!”

“And you’re going to fucking forget everything the minute you leave—”

Eddie had stood from his bed. His toes curled in his slippers. His chest heaved, shoulders a line like a bar of iron. He’d felt the bones in him like that, like lengths of metal.

“I’m not a pussy,” Eddie had said. “I’m fifteen. If my mom moves then I have to move with her.”

Guilt and shame always came late to Richie. He hunched, bending his scarecrow height into something nearly compact.

“You don’t have to go.” He said it pleading.

“Yes, I do,” said Eddie. And the truth, the little wretched ore of it, slipped from him because he allowed it to do so: “I have to take care of her.”

Richie looked at his shoes. He’d pulled his feet up, knees to his chin, shoes on the edge of the bed, pressing soil to the blue sailboat-patterned quilt. 

“You don’t have to do anything. You’re brave, Eddie,” he said. “You could stay. If you wanted to.”

“Get your shoes off the bed,” said Eddie, but he said it softly. “You’re getting dirt and shit on it. What if you have hookworms on your shoes and now they’re on my comforter, dumbass?”

“Whatever, like you’re not going to wash it anyway.” 

But he put his feet down. As he put them down, Richie looked, head still bowed, up at Eddie through his black curls. 

“C’mon, Eds,” he said. “Just tell your mom you’re staying. And you can stay with Went and Maggie. We have the spare room, and I’ll have my license so I can drive us to school and you don’t have to take the bus.”

Eddie, standing on the rug, the rug made of scrap cloth sewn and wound into a snakelike course, one end at the center and the rest of it encircling: Eddie looked at Richie with his shaggy curls and red and black flannel shirt and his scuffed up jeans with the miniscule tear at the left knee. Eddie thought of mirrors, movement in them: a flash of white make-up in the corner of his eyes. 

_Hey-a, Eddie. It’s your old friend Bob Gray. You gave me a real smack, didn’t ya, but I’m still here, ayuh, I’m still way down in that Derry dirt, that dirt your good friend Rich smeared all over your bed. Why, I wouldn’t just walk out on you, Eds, my Eds, Eddie my love. I’m still here! I’ll always be here! Say, wouldn’t it be swell if you came down to say hello? I’m awful lonely, Eddie, and I think a sweet little kiss from my good friend Eddie would heal these boo-boos right up._

“I don’t want to stay,” Eddie had said to Richie that night, and Richie had looked at him as no one had ever looked at Eddie before. He hadn’t known what that look meant. He’d never known. 

He’d forgotten it for about thirty years until the reception after Bill and Mike’s wedding and Richie gave Eddie that look again, and it was like how when you took a hot shower the moisture fogged up the mirror then you cleaned a circle with a towel and revealed the shadow in that fog as only your self, naked and flesh damp-hot and hair a wet tangle half of curls half of snarls. It was a look like that. It was a bared and baring look.

Eddie blinked and felt the sweep of his own eyelashes against his skin. His skin was without warning too thin for the whole of him, blood pumping through dilated veins and arteries, organs flush and made heavy with that arterial flow. The ache in his knee flared bright as a mountain torch, making signal to another peak. He felt the scar in his cheek as a firebreak. 

“Yeah,” said Richie. He cleared his throat. “Uh, red or white?”

“Rosé,” said Eddie. 

Richie scratched at the back of his head. His curls dissembled. His eyes were low-cast behind his glasses. “Rosé for Eds. Got it. One glass of the finest vintage for Mr Kaspbrak.”

He pushed out of his chair and disappeared back into the restaurant. 

Eddie looked unseeing at the dancing floor. Stan had returned. Joan, roused, was pulling at Patty’s hand and insisting that she dance. Bill and Mike swayed together, their foreheads pressed. The lights flashed and swayed as well, brushed by a cooling December breeze. 

“I’m sorry,” said Hugh, sitting in the chair Richie had vacated. “I got caught up in conversation. Did you know one of Michael’s cousins is an interior decorator? He lives in Baltimore. I didn’t mean to abandon you. I hope you weren’t lonely.”

He set a glass of red wine in front of Eddie. Eddie took the glass. 

“No, I was fine,” said Eddie. “Richie kept me company.”

“Did he?” Hugh sniffed at his own glass, a red wine, no doubt the same vintage as that which he’d picked for Eddie.

“Yeah,” said Eddie, studying Hugh with his thinning blond hair and his fine nose. “It’s always good to catch up with Rich.”

Hugh made a listening sound as he sipped wine. 

“What’d you say to him? Inside,” said Eddie. “He said you guys talked.”

“Nothing important,” said Hugh. He smoothed a fingertip along the rim of the glass. “Just expectations. Relationships. Things like that.”

“You didn’t discuss me?”

“Only in passing,” Hugh said. He chuckled. “I’m afraid that I’ve been, er, too jealous. And I’m sorry. I know that hasn’t been fair to you.”

“No, you’re right,” said Eddie, “I don’t think I’ve been fair to you.”

“Anyway, we sorted it out.”

“That’s good.”

“He laughed pretty hard when I suggested he was, um.” Hugh toyed with the stem of his glass. “Maybe flirting with you.”

“Right. Well, it’s pretty funny,” said Eddie. “The idea that Richie would be flirting. With me.”

The restaurant door opened. Hugh didn’t notice. Eddie glanced over his shoulder. Richie stood there, shoulder bracing the door. He’d a glass of the rosé in his left hand and a condensation-beaded bottle of local beer in the right hand. 

“It is funny, isn’t it,” said Hugh.

The lights refracted off Richie’s glasses. He smiled and saluted Eddie ironically with the glass of wine, then sliding back into the restaurant he drank from the glass. The door shut behind him. 

“Don’t you like the wine?”

“You know I like rosé better,” said Eddie.

“I’m sorry, Edward,” said Hugh, looking contrite. “I forgot.”

  
  


**the set-up.**

He brought the wheelchair to the Friendly Confines Wrigley Field for the evening game. Beverly made several fashion suggestions with regards to the power chair, beginning with baseball cards in the spokes and ending with wire-framed plumes of red silk that would trail out behind him like dragon’s wings.

At the bottom of a ramp, they got to their seats behind home plate and the protective netting. Rather, Beverly grabbed her seat while Eddie locked his chair beside her in its spot at the center of the spaced out row. 

“You want me to draw even more attention?” 

“Two words,” said Bev as she plopped in her fold-out seat. “Elton John.”

“Three words,” said Eddie, “no fucking way.”

Beverly cackled. She’d tied her red hair back in a short ponytail and stuffed that through the loop at the back of her Dodgers cap. Every time a Cubbie booed she gave them the bird. It was the natural order of things: the Dodgers were visiting, early in September. L.A.’d a guaranteed spot in the playoffs. The Cubs were fighting just to get a shot at the wild card game.

They split a bag of peanuts but Beverly insisted on her own grilled beef bratwurst with relish, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup: “the fixin’s,” she declared to the ballpark concierge she’d pulled out her back pocket. He, too, had looked disapprovingly at her L.A. Dodgers cap and jersey, made custom with M A R S H 86 across the back. Beverly had snapped her gum and grinned.

“You know, I had no idea you liked baseball,” Eddie admitted halfway through the top of the second. 

He sucked salt from his fingers. He’d worn his black fingerless gloves, the ones with the padding on the inside of each knuckle. The power chair didn’t need gloves, but he wore them like a talisman anyway. Just in case. 

“Sexist,” said Beverly. “Remember the dirt lot behind Beau’s?”

“Oh, shit,” said Eddie. It still surprised him, how even six years later memories still popped up. “Beau’s was that, that barbecue place off uh, shit.”

Beverly took a bite of her bratwurst. Relish squelched out the corner of her mouth. She thumbed it in.

“Little Bitch Road.” 

“Log Road 53,” said Eddie.

She laughed. “Oh, shut up! Everybody called it Little Bitch Road.”

“I didn’t call it that.”

“You absolutely did, you liar, you said Little Bitch Road same as the rest of us and then you told Richie he must live off it because he was a little bitch.”

Eddie nipped his tongue, trying to crack a peanut shell with his teeth. Coughing out the raggy shell, he was laughing. 

“Stan had that old tin tray from when his dad was in Vietnam, remember? We used that for home plate.”

“Oh, my God, we did,” said Eddie. “Who threw the ball that broke in the back window of Beau’s? Was that you?”

Beverly shook her head wildly then caved and made a little bow in her seat. He laughed again and offered her the bag. She waved it off. 

“I just don’t care about the stats,” said Beverly. “Ben loves the stats. He’s memorized the numbers for every player in both leagues.”

“What’s wrong with tracking the stats?”

“Of course you’d track the stats.” She groaned. “It takes away the romance! Baseball isn’t about numbers! It’s about the feeling.”

“The numbers are the romance,” Eddie argued. “It helps you see the framework, so you can appreciate the exceptions.”

“You and Ben, ugh. Do you share spreadsheets?”

“We’re in the same fantasy league!”

“Ugh,” she said again. “You guys are losers. Yeah, Dodgers!” She treated the booing crowd about them to a small flock. “What, nothing to say to that, Mr. Chicago?”

He made a noncommittal sound. The sun had purpled the sky. The lights around the field turned on.

“I live in Chicago. That doesn’t mean I root for Chicago,” he said. 

“Still a Metsman.”

He ate a peanut with great mystery about him. Beverly flicked a nail’s worth of mustard at him.

The baseball game had been Beverly’s idea, the tickets her request. “I’m an expensive date, Mr Kaspbrak,” she’d texted. “Just don’t tell Ben.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” he’d texted back. 

Eddie had only once hung out with Beverly without any of the other Losers, when they were children. While Bill and Ben blushed and stammered around her, and Richie talked loudly at length about his girlfriends from Chattanooga to Istanbul, Eddie had found girls intimidating and Beverly especially so with her vivid shirts and flash in a pan decisions.

Of course now things were easy between all the Losers, but there were matters Beverly and Eddie shared that the others didn’t and could not, strange and unhappy commonalities. His mother had made of Eddie a man about the house, a little sexless husband. Beverly’s father had tried to make a wife of Beverly or a girlfriend. They’d their divorces. 

Bill had his divorce too but he never discussed it with them. They all understood the divide. It was the Beverly and Eddie club, where the motto was _next time, don’t marry your parent’s ghost_ , and the member’s fee was the late night phone calls, the quiet confessions. 

If I could fix Tom, if I could just make him better… If I could just take care of Myra, you know, take care of her the right way… When I hit my dad, he made this sound… I was holding Mommy’s hand when she… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

Fireflies came out. The mosquitoes came too. A ballpark had such peculiar smells, such unique sounds. The wood crack of a bat punching into the cork-core ball. Salt, butter, fresh-tended grass, newly applied paint. The stadium sportscasters barking unintelligibly, hushed by the drone of thirty-some thousand people. 

The lights glared. The pitchers changed. The man at bat twisted with a ballerina’s power at the waist, the bat cutting a slice out of the air. 

“Strike two!”

They discussed the logistics with each other, as the game went on. Now ice cream bars made their mouths sticky. That was the romance of baseball: it made you a child.

“If it’s too much trouble…”

“You know I’d help you rush the stage. But don’t worry, I can take care of it.”

“Good,” said Eddie. “Because I didn’t really want to back down.”

“Bulldog with a rawhide,” said Beverly. “That’s you, Eddie.” She licked chocolate shell off the outside of her thumb. “No, I’ll talk to Kay. She loves practical jokes, so long as she’s in on them.”

“You know,” said Eddie slowly, as he wiped at his mouth with a folded napkin. “You could still go up there and—”

“And introduce you?” Beverly gasped and dropped her head on his shoulder. “Ohhh, I’ll have to beg Ben to take pictures of Richie’s face.”

“You have to share them.”

“God, of course, Eddie, I’m not a monster,” said Beverly. “We can blow them up huge and make a banner.”

“Don’t do that, he’d love that,” said Eddie, “we have too many tour posters in the house anyway.”

“Oh, and you hate _that_.” She snorted. “Looking at your hot hubby—”

“No—”

“Well-groomed—”

“Do not say hubby, don’t call him hubby—”

Beverly pitched her voice lower and wriggled her shoulders. “Hubba hubba, Mr Tozier.”

“Fuck you, Bev.”

“In your fucking dreams,” said Beverly.

“I don’t have dreams,” said Eddie snobbishly. He glanced through his phone notifications. “I take trazodone.”

“Shut up, bitch, we all take trazodone,” said Beverly. Then she waved down one of the guys hyping up his load of iced drinks. “You want a beer?”

“I want a beer,” said Eddie.

She hollered the guy down. Looking at her, Eddie remembered a day at the quarry, still pond full of chemical run-off, Eddie trudging along and whacking at weeds with a stick. Bev was sitting on a mud-streaked rock at the edge of the water. Crying, maybe, but she’d turned her face away. She was smoking a cigarette. There were bruises along her upper left arm. The marks of a man’s hand. She had a bruise on her jaw too. 

She said, “Water smells like shit. Better stay out or you’ll get sick.”

“I’m already sick,” Eddie had said. He sat down beside her, in the mud next to the rock. He dug into the silt with the stick. “I’ve probably got dengue fever. Mosquitoes breed in the quarry because the water’s stagnant and the city doesn’t spray for the eggs and my mom says that Maine’s reporting a higher caseload of hemorrhagic fevers than any year before, even 1983, so I’m supposed to wear long sleeves when I go out.”

Beverly looked at him. He considered the stick. Then he got up, clumsily, mud sticking to his shorts, and tossed the stick out into the water as if it were the Olympics and he competed in the javelin. 

“Nice t-shirt,” she said. 

“It’s stupid horse shit anyway.” He brushed uselessly at the mud on his butt.

“You know DJ Jazzy Jeff?” She scooched over on the rock so he could sit next to her with his knees drawn up to his chest. “And the Fresh Prince?”

“Yeah,” he lied.

Beverly glanced sidelong at him under his lashes. She flicked her cigarette so the ashes spilled across the water.

“You know parents all the same,” she drawled, “no matter time nor place. They don’t understand that us kids are going to make mistakes.”

He snorted. “What mistake did you make?”

Beverly shrugged and collapsed onto her back. A plume of smoke rose from her lips as she exhaled.

“What’d you do?”

“I didn’t kiss her good morning.”

“Me either,” Beverly had said. She flicked the whole of her cigarette into the quarry water and arched effortlessly upright. “C’mon. Maybe someone’s around to play ball.”

The beer vendor got to them. Beverly stuffed a wad of cash into his hand in exchange for two beers. “Keep the change,” she shouted.

“Miss—”

“Better listen to her,” Eddie said. 

The beer vendor shrugged and popped the caps then handed them each a condensation slick glass bottle of Modelo Especial. 

They toasted to the Mets’ 5-2 win over the Giants, then to the dirt lot behind Beau’s, then to second marriages. 

“And to the look on Richie’s face,” added Beverly.

Eddie solemnly offered his bottle for her to clink her own against, and then he grinned thinking of Richie, thinking of Richie’s astonishment, the way his eyes would widen and his harsh smile would turn soft and wondering, for Eddie. Yes, for Eddie.

He looked at the current batter, decked in Dodgers white with blue. He saw Richie, age 13, buck-toothed, shouting, “Hey, batter-batter, hey, batter-batter, suh-wing, batter-batter!” pounding his fist into his hand-me-down too-damn-big glove, nicked from Wentworth Tozier's home office and press-ganged to service behind Beau's. The crowd chattered, booed, cheered. Fireflies buzzed. Moths struck against the lights high above and made fine fritzing sounds lost in the relentless booming of the sportscasters. The batter swung. The ball cracked. It flew high, vanishing white into the gleam and glare of the stadium lights. “It's going! It's going! My God, it's good and it is! still! going!”

Eddie blinked, the lip of the bottle at his tongue. The batter turned and looked over his shoulder. He grinned. It was Richie, not 13 but 46, his forehead near bare, black curls peeking out under the Dodgers helmet, his teeth flashing bright. Hey, Eddie, how far you think I belted that one? You think it got to Pennnnnn-seeeel-vain-i-ya? 

Run, you dumb shit, Eddie thought; but of course the batter had already taken first base and was rounding second as Beverly launched out of her chair, launched the bag of peanuts, screamed and tore her hat from her head and swung it wide in a grand circle like a farmer calling the cattle home. Like summer singing the kids home for the night.

  
  


**a little courage in a shot.**

For the event the organizers had paid for the hotel to man the bar well into the night. That was where Eddie found him in the end. He’d freshly escaped the press, so it looked. The spotlighted champions of the WNBA were taking their turns before the flashbulbs and the brilliant backdrops throughout the lobby. Strong women, tall, powerfully built and leggy, their arms wound about each other as they laughed and glowed in the multitudinous onslaught of the camera.

The man at the bar had loosed his tie. His black curls, managed before when he stood on-stage, had turned wild. A coddled python abandoned in the everglades found among the roots of the cypress and the mangrove a robust appetite for alligator and film-eyed swamp fish.

So it was for Edward Kaspbrak as he made his excuses to Ben Hanscom and pushed into the lingering crowd of guests, invited or otherwise, sharing cheer found in a glass. He’d seen the man at the bar. Those broad and heavy shoulders, neatly dressed at angles by a well-fitted suit. A glimpse of hips, as broad, hid by the length of the jacket. He was blue; he was silver. His nape flashed pale as he dipped his head of dark hair.

It was easy to imagine the slide of a hand down that long back, a back Eddie imagined was thick and plush, just so, that delicate fraction permitted by the presence of subcutaneous fat, a genetic legacy of the mother or father. He would touch his fingertips to the nape, exposed, and draw his fingers in a loose formation from the expanse of shoulder down the supposed bend of the spine to that hollow low in the back, that hollow where the nerve endings shivered and sparked at a touch, the mouths of small fish at the surface of the water as tiny flakes fell to them. 

His cane clicked on the floor. He wielded it carelessly. The people parted for him, some supercilious, others startled. Eddie gave them all narrow looks. 

Thinking of touching that back had brought phantom pinpricks along his own spine. Two spots remained cool, numb to the thought. Even the mind could not waken them. His knee half-locked. 

He thought of Richie’s heavy hands massaging his back, his thumbs pushing into muscle, the weight of his ass on the lightly haired backs of Eddie’s thighs. His thumbs had calluses from typing and the way that he rubbed at his jeans as he thought. Those calluses would scrap against Eddie’s skin. His hands would be hot. If he pushed with his knuckles then the little dark hairs that grew on Richie’s fingers and hands would scratch. 

“And a vodka gimlet with seltzer,” the man at the bar called. “Add a slice of lime to the rim.”

The vodka gimlet, with seltzer, was Eddie’s private pleasure. He leaned against the bar next to the man, near enough their arms fitted snugly to one another. The man looked at him. He’d blue-framed glasses on. The shade of blue very nearly matched his eyes. 

“I’ll cover the drinks,” said Eddie loudly for the bartender. He didn’t look away from the man. 

The man stared at Eddie a moment. The corner of his mouth began to curl. He caught on quick. The man put his elbow on the bar and rested his chin in that palm.

“Thanks.” He pulled it like taffy between teeth and tongue. “You buy a lot of drinks tonight?”

“How many you order?”

“Just the two to start.”

“Then I guess I haven’t paid for much,” said Eddie. He pulled his wallet out from the inner pocket of his red jacket. 

The bartender slid two drinks over and took Eddie’s cash without question. Eddie snagged the vodka cocktail while the man toyed with the whiskey sour, two pumps maple syrup.

“How do you figure that cocktail’s for you?”

“I’m paying.”

The man tickled his fingers along his jaw. He was repressing a smile poorly. His eyes crinkled with lines. Eddie held the cocktail glass and using his tongue, pulled the tiny straw to his mouth.

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” the man asked. He took a sip of his own drink. His throat worked with it. Eddie eyed that thick apple, moving.

“I was on stage earlier,” said Eddie, dismissive. “Introducing some guy.”

“Oh, yeah.” The man nodded and shifted, dropping his arm so he could turn and settle with his back to the bar. “That Rich Tozier asshole. You ask me, it oughtta been you getting the award.”

“Me?” Eddie arched his eyebrow. He laughed a little. The man beamed. Turning to mirror him, Eddie tucked the cane to his elbow and rested his weight on the bar. “I’m nobody famous.” He said it with enough real dryness.

The man leaned forward at the waist to give Eddie a deliberate once over, long and slow, eyes now dark behind those glasses. A trick of the light. 

“A guy who looks like you?” The man settled again. His hip pressed to Eddie’s. Their thighs moved intimately alongside one another. “Fuck off. You must be a model. Or, uh, somebody brought you here.”

“Nobody who’ll miss me,” said Eddie.

The man met his eyes. Neither of them looked away. The man turned slightly and switched his drink from the left hand to the right so he could place his left hand on the bar, on the other side of Eddie. That broadness of him hid the rest of the room, so that Eddie, coolly holding his cocktail, saw nothing else. Their breath touched hotly, alcohol sharp, a distant thought of sweat. If Eddie stood straight, then his chest would brush against the man’s. Their thighs would mingle. Eddie would tip up his chin. If he pulled in a breath, then the buttons of his jacket would rasp against the exposed, silver waistcoat the man wore across his wide midriff. He imagined a series of flickers, the man’s body against his; his body against Richie’s. Muscle, fat, sinew, sweat and hair: scar tissue carving up Eddie’s chest: Richie’s head bent back and his throat a long invitation. Bite me, kiss me, fuck me, love me. 

Lime burned the tip of Eddie’s tongue. He swallowed.

“That can’t be true,” said the man, husky. “I’d miss you every day of my life.”

“Well,” said Eddie. “You’ve got me right here. Mister…?”

He lifted up his tumbler and drained the rest of the whiskey sour. The faint sugar-sweetness of maple lingered. His lips gleamed.

“Richie,” he said. “Just Richie. I’m some guy you introduced.”

Eddie echoed Richie by taking a long, slow draw on his vodka. He pulled the lime off the rim before setting the glass back on the bar. 

“I’m Edward Kaspbrak,” he said. He pushed the lime between Richie’s lips. Rich bit down on it and shuddered, sour-struck and thrilled with it. He pulled on the flavor. His pupils shone black. “You want to get the fuck out of here?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: parental abuse, Sonia's implicit racism and anti-semitism, implied homophobia, body horror, death, Very Weird God Shit, references to vomit and to shit. 
> 
> The chapter count has gone up by one, to accommodate what will structurally be an epilogue.
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience as I wrote this chapter. I hope to have the final piece up next week.

**the honey days.**

On the third morning of his honeymoon Eddie woke violently in the soft spaces of his own bed in the pale stripe-papered expanse of his own room, with the light of the day coming golden sweet through the windows. The light gilt small motes of dust doing as they did in the air. At his back, Richie made the little movements and low noises that he did each morning as he lazily did his own waking. 

Eddie’s heart, driven by the adrenal glands of the unthinking brain, tripped in his chest. He pulled a slow breath through his nose. Richie’s nose pressed to the small of his back. This was his house. This was their house. Oil-slick memories made dark lines in his head. This was the bungalow in Chicago, the home that Edward Kaspbrak and Richard Tozier owned.

A small metal handrail was fitted to the frame of the bed, near to Eddie’s head. He concentrated on that, the handrail and then also the way that Richie, who’d curled shrimp-like in his sleep and slipped low in the bed, nuzzled into Eddie’s hip and his large hands roamed without purpose across Eddie’s thigh or now his chest with its concave bowl beneath the heart. 

Eddie’s hip had gone numb. He’d rolled onto the left side of his body in sleep. His left foot was goose-pimpled. He fisted his toes. Moving to face Richie took long minutes. His back ached too. A phantom clenching in his chest, as if someone had grabbed a handful of the parts of his lung that no longer existed. 

Richie had uncurled when Eddie finished maneuvers. His eyelids were heavy. The right eye slightly crossed and his pupils, without glasses, were dark-swollen. His beard, grey-spotted, had flattened on the one side in his sleep. So had his dark curls, matted to his head. Richie stroked three fingers along Eddie’s side. They cupped his hip. Eddie felt a ghost of pressure. He took hold of Richie’s wrist and lifted his hand so that he could press Richie’s heavy hand to his neck instead, to the slope of neck and shoulder.

Richie made a sleepy sound. 

“Numb,” said Eddie shortly. “Sore.”

Richie’s fingers curled. He brushed his thumb along Eddie’s unshaven jaw. His voice when he spoke was rougher. “Tylenol?”

Eddie shook his head. He wanted to weather it. When he had felt it, Richie breathing against him and holding him, he’d let the worst of the dream go. 

Winding an arm around Richie’s broad back, Eddie pressed his face into the stubbled shadows of Richie’s throat. Richie stroked his jaw, stroked, stroked.

“B’dream?”

Eddie nipped his adam’s apple. Richie said, “F’k’you,” as if to say _darling_. He shifted, his thick legs spreading, and drew Eddie closer. The thin-worn cotton of Richie’s lounge pants brushed soft against the prickled skin of Eddie’s legs.

At last Eddie released a juddering sigh. His head fell back. He looked up his nose at Richie, who looked cross-eyed down his nose at Eddie.

“I was in the cistern.” He said it without inflection. “I was cold. So I knew I was dead. And everyone was gone. But you were still there. Hanging in the air. And there was a cloud of blood around your head. And I was dead so I couldn’t move so I had to watch that blood going up and up toward the ceiling.”

Richie looked at him then shifted again, rising up on one elbow so that he could cradle Eddie’s jaw in his one hand and still stroke the unruly black hair from his eyes with the rough, square fingers of the other hand.

“Didn’t happen,” said Richie, sleep-rough and heavy-lidded and sincere, “because you saved me first,” and he bent to kiss Eddie on the sweaty temple, and he bent to kiss Eddie on the keloid rumpled cheek, and he bent to kiss Eddie on the mouth but Eddie grimacing turned away.

“Don’t, your breath smells like shit.”

Richie huffed a laugh. He said, Marlon Brando like a cigar rolling on his tongue, “You come to me for comfort, now, but when I wish to show you my appreciation, you turn me away like a dog that begs on the corner for bread.”

“I want to kiss you,” said Eddie, “I just don’t want to kiss you when your breath smells like shit,” and he fingered the flatted hairs of Richie’s beard, tugging gently. 

Richie smiled at him. His eye squinted. Eddie thought of the Richie that floated, blood oozing from his emptied eye sockets and the ruined gaping hole of his mouth, but he couldn’t remember him now with the reality of Richie’s morning breath before him and the thin ruddy lines of Richie’s lips still red-bitten at the corners from the night before.

“Oh, hey, wait,” said Richie, “I got something, hold on.” He turned suddenly, sitting upright, and Eddie cursed as he bounced on the bed. “Sorry, sorry. Is your back okay?”

“I don’t know, ask my fucking spinal injury.”

“Try this.” Richie, turned back to him, stuffed a white candy-coated square in Eddie’s mouth. He popped another in his own.

Eddie bit down, shattering the candy. Wintergreen flooded his mouth. “Is this gum?”

“Orbits, baby,” said Richie, landing back on one elbow. “They’re gonna sponsor the podcast. C’mon, don’t spit it out, it’s like brushing your teeth.”

“It is not like brushing your teeth.”

“You wanna make out?” 

Richie arched a brow. Eddie looked him over. Some shadows still ate at the nape of Eddie’s neck. A voice came up from the ground beneath his feet and said, _Hey, Eddie—_

Richie was hairy, darkly hairy and curled with it. Even the neatly pebbled areolas had long dark hairs. The length of his shoulders bent toward him. The slope of his belly settled with gravity against the bed. 

Eddie chewed the gum thoroughly then, to Richie’s immediate waking delight, swallowed it. Richie said, “Eddie! That’s going to turn into a rock in your stomach and you’re gonna never shit again,” and Eddie said, “That’s bullshit, that’s not remotely scientifically true,” and Richie said, “Freshness check,” and opened his mouth with the little wad of white gum on his tongue and exhaled. 

“Swallow your gum or I’ll do it for you,” said Eddie, spreading on his back. 

“Gross, Tozier,” said Richie. He leaned over Eddie and grabbed a tissue from the box on Eddie’s bedstand table. He spat into it, wadded the tissue, and tossed it over his shoulder. “You know, some of us give a shit about our health.”

“Fuck you, Kaspbrak,” said Eddie.

Richie settled half on top of him. His weight pressed Eddie into the mattress. Eddie wound his right leg around the back of Richie’s leg and drew him closer still. 

In an hour or so Eddie would have to use the handrail to leverage himself out of bed into the wheelchair. Then he’d drive it to the master bath, with the handrails along the walls and the bench in the combined shower and bath, with its raised ledge to step over. He liked to do these things on his own as Richie made breakfast and shouted through the walls at him.

Eddie drew in a breath, a deep and mint-scented breath that inflated his lung and the half of the other, and let Richie lick at his unbrushed teeth and into his opening mouth. The hair of Richie’s chest scratched at Eddie’s more thinly haired pectorals, his carefully managed abdominals. The weight of Richie’s belly, his chest, his arms, the measure of each broad-spanning hand: these things warmed his cooled flesh, so that as his heart beat he felt it like the striking of a drum.

Richie settled on top of him like so engulfed the world. He was gravity, bound to the pull of the earth, and so too was Eddie, the both of them tied to the magnetic pulse of the soil and beneath the soil the rock and beneath the rock the molten rock and beneath the molten rock the compressed core that could not altered or broken despite the titanic movements of mountain and plain and ocean. 

He ran the tip of his tongue along Richie’s hard palate and felt Richie shiver against him. Under Eddie’s hands, the hairs so thick on Richie’s forearms stood half on end, the hair scratching his palms as he brushed his hands up and down and up those arms. A tense and slithering heat moved along Eddie’s spine; it made waves low in his belly. Sweat prickled his own neck. His dick hardened.

“Baby,” said Richie between kisses. Saliva wetly linked their lips. “Eddie. God. Eddie. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie Tozier.”

Eddie fisted a hand in Richie’s hair and pulled. At Richie’s shuddering gasp, Eddie thought yes, yes, yes, this is me alive, and rose in a little crunch to bite at Richie’s throat not for the blood but for the proof.

“Richie Kaspbrak,” said Eddie, and Richie felt for Eddie’s hips and pulled. Pain twinged in the crook of Eddie’s hip but it made him shiver then, it made him groan, it made him think again of the sweat sticking the sheets to his back and the way that Richie had tasted when Eddie kissed him. He tasted like evergreen-flavored Orbits gum. He tasted nothing of blood.

**exit stage left, pursued by lover.**

Of course they hadn’t changed their names. 

At the after-event of the InStyle Awards, Rich Tozier made the rounds with the photographers and the eager young journalists who saw entertainment reporting as the first leg on the ladder to the real shit, the good shit, _investigative journalist for the New York Times_. Eddie disliked the New York Times. He told this to Ben.

“You’re drunk,” said Ben. Eddie glared at him. “You’re a little drunk.”

“It’s not fair,” said Eddie. “Look at you. You look like the Rock.”

Ben scratched at the side of face, the contours gentler now than six years ago. He said, “I don’t really want to talk about what I look like, Eddie,” in that apologetic way he had of saying such things, as though he thought he might be bothering you if he set a boundary.

Eddie said, “Okay,” and then he said, “Have you been watching that Three Body Problem show?”

“I don’t care for the showrunners.”

“Well, good, because it’s _ass_ ,” said Eddie, “it’s like the producers picked the dumbest guys they could find. Where’s the science, bro? What happened to fucking quantum theory?”

The bar had remained open. Eddie nursed his second vodka gimlet. Despite Ben’s assessment Eddie was doing very well with his water intake versus the alcohol. Ben had claimed a single whiskey and held it mostly as an excuse to stand in a corner of the room away from the cameras. Eddie had gratefully joined him.

They discussed Cixin Liu’s writing for a good half hour, with Ben mildly interjecting criticism of the character relationships while Eddie expounded on the failings of the Netflix show in contrast with the plain explanations of quantum physics in the books. Then they discussed the author’s politics, a firm full stop for Ben but something Eddie was willing to overlook.

“That’s not what I said,” Eddie protested. “I said that we can’t judge him based on the propaganda—”

“Well, what about the propaganda we grew up with?” said Ben. “We both know that AIDS isn’t spread on toilet seats, that people with HIV are people—”

Eddie colored. Ben said, soft again, “All I’m saying is, Eddie, that we can still ask more of someone, no matter what they grew up with.”

“I know,” Eddie said, “Jesus, I grew up in Derry, too.”

“Well, if you two don’t look like the sorriest sacks of shit I’ve ever seen,” said Beverly as she descended on them. She gave Eddie a squeeze then took the tumbler of whiskey from Ben and kissed him with such sweetness on the lower lip that Eddie looked away for Richie. 

“We were talking about books,” said Eddie absently. 

His husband was currently posing with Kerry Washington for the cameras, the two of them laughing, Kerry gorgeous, Richie, well, the handsomest Muppet Eddie had ever seen. Kerry had worn a gown like seafoam, the color and in the texture. She could have introduced Richie but Eddie had introduced him instead. He liked Kerry. She was a lovely person, truly. She was friendly with Richie and Eddie was cordial with her the way that you were cordial with your husband’s coworkers. He’d still introduced Richie.

Richie smiled with his profile to Eddie. His little overbite showed. His jawline even under that beard was a line like a definition, writ plainly in the dictionary. His unoccupied arm hung flatly along his side. The pocket square was off-center.

“Please don’t make me explain death of the author again.” Beverly slipped her hand into the crook of Eddie’s elbow. She took a sip of Ben’s whiskey without flinching. “He’d really like it if you took a picture with him.”

“How do you even take a fucking picture?” said Eddie.

“C’mon,” said Beverly. She took another gulp of whiskey and sighed. Her feet were bare. Ben held her shoes. “You just play Little Orphan Eddie. Make your eyes big and sad, and point your feet at Richie.”

“My eyes aren’t big,” said Eddie.

“Huge eyes,” said Beverly, pushing him away from her. “Humongous. Bambi eyes.”

Eddie flipped her off. She only laughed, their Boudicca: red-haired and armor-plated; and plucked the glass of vodka gimlet from his hand.

He learned as he crossed the floor that Ben had stood with his back to the room not incidentally, but to use his height to block Eddie from most lines of sight. People began to intercept him in ones and twos, then photographers crowded, then came the rest.

“Mr Kasper—”

“Kaspbrak,” he said, “Edward _Kaspbrak_.”

“What brought you out—”

“—your relationship with Mrs Hanscom—”

“She goes by Marsh,” he said loudly. “That’s her name.”

“I just wanted to say I thought that was so sweet,” said a woman he didn’t know at his elbow, “and so funny, oh my God!”

“So be honest with me, Edward,” said a man with a tape recorder, “how much of that speech did Richie write for you?” 

His hand sweated around the head of his cane. A man with a camera stood right to the left of him, pinning Eddie in. The muscle in Eddie’s scarred cheek pulled. He smiled. He knew it made him look dangerous. He crushed the end of his cane on the cameraman’s foot.

“Excuse me,” said Edward Kaspbrak. “I’d like to take some pictures with my husband. If you don’t mind. Thank you.” He dipped into the softer, mellow tones of his customer service voice.

(“What the fuck was that?” Richie had asked the first time he’d heard it. “Is Snow White in there? Is that Disney’s Snow White trapped inside you?”

“I’m on speaker, dickshit!” Eddie snarled.

Later Richie remarked: “Well, at least the client had a sense of humor.”

“The fucking HR department doesn’t!”)

Even as he spooked away some clingers, others drew near. Between the voice and the judicious application of his full body weight on his cane, Eddie got close enough to the decorative wall with its partitions and blooming vines that Richie shouted over the lot of them. 

“All right, all right, you ghouls, get the fuck outta here. Not you, Tamika, I know you’re on that internship. Can I please tell my husband he’s an asshole to his face? Move it. Move it.”

Eddie stomped to Richie, whose cheeks were so charmingly rumpled and his forehead so lined and his eyes so very shiny that Eddie knew instantaneously that Richie had seen the whole thing.

“You couldn’t have escorted me?” Eddie said. He wasn’t angry, though he teased at it.

“Bev’s the one who got you,” Richie protested. “Why didn’t you ask her? Or dreamy Ben? You could’ve used him like a snow plow.”

“Beverly and Ben know I can take care of myself.” He wedged next to Richie, who slung an arm around his waist and snugged him close.

“But I’m in the doghouse for knowing you poisoned the tip of that thing?”

His anger defused. Eddie said, “When would I have had time to put poison on it? I just got this cane.”

The cameras flashed. Occasionally instructions were conveyed to them. 

“D’you think Scrooge McDuck poisons his cane?” Richie said to him.

“He probably has poison darts in them.”

Richie giggled. His knees twitched with it. Eddie laid a hand on the back of Richie’s near thigh, and Richie glanced down at Eddie. 

“Look at the camera, Rich,” said Eddie.

“Why bother?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. His feet pointed to Richie. “You’re the star.”

“I want them to see me looking at you,” said Richie, looking at him. A flash pop illuminated the bones of his face, the corner of his jaw. It made chiaroscuro shadows of the far side of his face, striking shapes off his nose, his glasses, the curve of his brow.

“Why would you want that?” Eddie looked away. “The guys at work are already gonna give me grief.”

“’Cause I want them to look at you too,” said Richie. The muscles of his thigh pulled beneath Eddie’s fingers. Richie made a little show of leaning to whisper to Eddie, who smiled thinly at the camera. “I want everybody to see you.”

Eddie snorted. “Risk analyst with a cane.”

“Eddie Kaspbrak,” Richie corrected. “You think they’re here for me? They’re here for you.”

Eddie’s chest thrummed. He said, “That’s categorically not true. You just got an award.”

“Well,” said Richie, smoothing his fingers one by one down Eddie’s hip. “I’m here for you. For the cameras. For life. For that big bed in our hotel room…”

Another flash went off. They were white shapes, made brilliant. A closed loop, as Richie pressed a dry kiss to Eddie’s temple, turned from the cameras. His lips were half-parted. He sighed into Eddie’s skin then straightened. 

“Beep beep,” said Eddie. His ears were hot. All of him burned hot. He grabbed for Richie’s hand and held him firmly, chaste and chastened. Richie’s thumb rasped incrementally over Eddie’s knuckles. 

The rest of the night’s events passed dream-like, in this manner: lights like bubbles, the blare of Bev’s laugh, Richie’s crooked grin with his crooked teeth. Ben moved light on his feet between curious attendees. 

“Why aren’t Mike and Bill here?” This from Beverly, who handed to Eddie the vodka gimlet, half-drunk. “It’s LA! Home turf!”

“They’re working on their book,” said Ben as Richie said, “Summoning ritual in the nerd cabin.

“Plus, why would I want them here?” added Richie. “Mike would walk in and they’d be like oh, sorry, we made a mistake. This is the most stylish man of 2022. Richard Tozier, please vacate the premises.”

“Shut up, that’s not funny,” said Eddie. “You look great.”

“I don’t know why they didn’t put Ben up there.”

“Beep beep,” said Ben.

“Yeah, beep beep, Animal,” said Beverly. “But he’s right, sweetheart, you’d look good up there.”

Ben made a face. His brow had flushed.

“No, shut up, loser,” said Eddie to Richie, “you’re—”

“I’m?”

Beverly’s eyes darted from Richie to Eddie. Ben, still flushed, had a hand at her arm and his attention on the molding of the ceiling.

Eddie said, “You looked fine,” and Richie brayed laughter.

What he meant of course was that he’d wanted to eat Richie. He’d wanted to peel Richie out of each layer of his suit, Richie playing at being good by pliantly moving his arms wherever Eddie needed them. He’d wanted, and the wanting had filled his gut with embarrassment like how they’d put hot stones in the belly of the big bad wolf. He wanted to have bit a bruise on Richie’s jaw, a swollen little mark red and raw hidden under that beard.

And it was later, not much later but later, yes, that Eddie slipped his arm around Richie’s waist and pressed his chin to Richie’s shoulder and murmured, “Let’s get out of here, Rich,” and Richie shivered against him so minutely no one could have seen, no one could have known. Only Eddie knew, Eddie against whom Richie trembled and then leaned, his weight settling into the bend of Eddie’s shoulder, Eddie braced already with his cane and his leg brace to take that weight. 

Richie blew a kiss to Kerry across the room. Eddie murmured, “The driver’s downstairs.” The toe of Richie’s foot nudged at Eddie’s foot. Their shoes gleamed together. 

“Look at you,” murmured Richie in his turn. “You’re so efficient. Gets me hot.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” said Eddie. “You’re lucky that makes me hot.”

Richie turned his lower lip out in a pout that looked nothing short of absurd on him. “But you said you’d be a pain in my ass tonight.”

“I’m trying to be sexy, but you keep ruining it.”

“Eddie,” said Richie, “baby. Sweetheart. Angel. My love. The flower that blooms forever in my heart.”

“I’m begging you to shut the fuck up,” said Eddie. 

“You could beg me to shut the fuck up and it would be the sexiest thing I ever heard.”

Eddie hooked a finger in Richie’s cuff and tugging, so lightly, drew Richie around to him. Softly, earnestly, he said, “I love you, Trashmouth,” and he returned that dry kiss to Richie, pressing it into the fold of his cheek.

Richie touched his brow briefly to the crown of Eddie’s head. He said, in a voice that was only a touch unsteady, “C’mon, Eds. Take me home.”

**dreaming spaces.**

i. _down in the deep, down in the dark_

A light flashed, three lights, _pop!_ and the bulb shattered. Out of the bulb rushed water, a grey torrent of sediment and shit and piss and rainwater run-off from the old paper mill. The cascade knocked him over at the knees. _Pop! pop! pop!_ The drone of a waterfall.

Eddie got to his scraped knees and ran. The world was a black sheet. Someone had laid out a dirt path on it and to either side of the path, the ghostlines of trees in greenwood embrace. His heart, beating, pumped sewage out the puncture wounds of his chest, his back.

The trees moved. The path jumbled with rocks. His arm ached in its cast. He’d lost his shoe in the dank under places. Mommy would rise up from her chair like a Greek titan. 

In the distance against the black he saw Mr Dale, their biology teacher, drawing on the white board. _The wolf spider makes burrows along the shores of lakes and streams. While most burrowing spider species are wait-and-see predators, the wolf spider actively roams in search of prey._ The clown with its teeth grinned on the whiteboard. Mr Dale’s wooden dummy’s head fell off; then his limbs broke away and the torso dropped beneath the black with the sound of something small and sleek slipping into the water.

His lung gurgled. It filled with dark water. He stumbled, spewing it from his mouth. He stumbled again. The path had ended. Eddie launched headfirst into the terminus. 

He plunged into cold water. A cloud of filth followed him. His body excreted it. His mother’s eyes were columns of smoke; her teeth were pillars of flame. I don’t like you playing with those dirty boys, Edward, I don’t like that awful Richard, and he heard too her whispered admonitions against Mike and against Stanley, they’ll just make you dirty, Edward, they’ll make you as filthy as they are, Edward, that little redheaded _slut_ did she touch you, Eddie, did she touch my little boy, my good sweet boy, did she lie to you and steal your cleanness, and the way that Richie looks at you, I know he’s a nasty boy, he’s one of those nasty men with their nasty sickness, and you’re clean, you’re my clean little boy, my perfect boy, _oh, Edward, I was so afraid when your father passed but I knew I had to be strong and look at you now, my good sweet Eddie, why, you’re just like your father, you’re my little handsome man, come give Mommy a kiss on the cheek._

She leaned forward with her face ablaze and dripping wax.

EDWARD, said the great voice in the black, the deep voice, the voice that spat out the stars. Sonia scattered, a school of tiny silver fish vanishing into the farther shadows.

The voice said again: EDWARD; and the tenor of it cracked the bones in his flesh. It ripped the muscle from the bone.

And a third time, EDWARD, said the Turtle in the words of the resurrection.

Eddie, his flesh tearing from him, screamed.

ii. _possibly i like the thrill_

Now he sits in the backseat of the car with Richie. The driver politely raises the partition. Richie’s eyes shine. His glasses shine. The Man of Style award sits a glass lump between them. 

Eddie’s heart trembles. He lowers his eyes. His eyelashes touch his cheeks. Absently he touches the award. He runs a finger over the little bronzed plaque, a finger that traces the letters in order R I C H A R D T O Z I E R. 

Richie swallows. It clicks in his throat. The sound of it is the first strike of a length of polished wood against an ō-daiko. Fingering the award, Eddie takes it in hand and studies it: the high gloss of the glass, the dark tint of it, the modernist shape of it as a trapezoid with angles severe. His reflection in the glass is a shadow. It is the implication of a man.

He looks at Richie. Richie is looking at Eddie’s hands. Eddie says, “Congratulations, Rich,” and he takes the one hand from the award and he glides it lightly along Richie’s thigh. The musculature of Richie’s leg seizes. He has such thick thighs.

Eddie unbuckles his seat belt.

“Hey, man,” says Richie. “You better buckle back up. It’s the law.”

Eddie grins. He grips Richie’s leg. Richie makes a show of plucking at his own seatbelt, still firmly fastened. 

“Richie,” says Richie in a nasal approximation of Eddie’s voice, “seventy-nine percent of people killed in car crashes died because they weren’t wearing their seatbelts.”

“Forty-seven percent,” says Eddie, sliding nearer.

Richie clears his throat. “Forty-seven percent of people killed in car crashes die ‘cause they took off their seatbelts.”

“I’m the risk analyst.” Eddie kisses the corner of Richie’s jaw. The hairs of his beard, coarse, scratch at Eddie’s lips like wool. “I analyzed the risks.”

“You just wanna make out,” says Richie. “I got you all figured out, Mr Wall Street.”

Eddie leans closer. Their breath mingles. Richie’s hand settles at the small of Eddie’s back then slides slowly in a lingering glide up the curve of spine to cup his nape. His fingers are warm. Broad. 

Eddie lets his own hand mirror Richie’s course. His fingers brush along the inseam. Richie inhales raggedly. Eddie draws his other hand up the broad lines of Richie’s chest. He twists two fingers in the pocket square. This, he tugs free. 

They kiss again, longly. Richie’s tongue coils. Eddie’s back aches from the position; his hip sparks. So it’s with some small stiffness that he adjusts, moving from the seat to Richie’s lap, his knees to either side of Richie’s expansive thighs. He knocks his head on the roof of the car. Richie laughs. Eddie stuffs a corner of the pocket square into Richie’s mouth then covers half his face with the rest. He kisses him through the silk. Richie sighs. His legs part. Eddie’s hip sparks again as his legs are forced wider. He accepts tomorrow’s soreness. The need of the chair. Plaintively: can’t I have this? Just this, right now?

Oh, now they’re in the hotel. The doorman smiles. The lights of the lobby glimmer like a Cinderella fantasy. They walk together. Eddie’s new cane makes muted clicks with each step. He limps some. Richie takes his weight and as he takes it their hands brush. Their fingers tangle. Richie’s wedding band is a warm line of metal. 

The elevator opens to them. The floor is made of marble tiles in gold and black and smooth bright white, an art deco throwback. Thank God they’re alone.

Eddie lifts his hand with Richie’s hand and mouths at the wedding band. 

“Jesus, Eds,” says Richie. He crowds Eddie against the rail, his shoulders like wedges, his back a barrier against the glass-enclosed light that hangs from the elevator’s glimmering roof. 

Eddie slings an arm around Richie’s shoulders. He tips back his head so that Richie can devour his throat. Teeth, tongue, lips pulling and softening. In Eddie’s fine, fitted trousers, his dick sits swollen and heavy. He holds the pocket square crumpled in his hand. He grapples with the rail, the silk slipping along the metal.

He wants Richie’s quick-shooting mouth on his cock, for Richie to use his tongue to talk fast against the throbbing underside of Eddie’s erection. Sometimes when Eddie wants like this he says his thoughts out loud, too swift, a constant pattering that rises in pitch. Richie bites harder at him; he must be talking now. He likes Richie’s mouth. He likes the way Richie blows him, like it’s a conversation. He didn’t like blowjobs, he never liked blowjobs, he tried with Myra and he tried with Hugh but it wasn’t like with Richie because with Richie it’s like they’re still talking and also did Richie know how hot he was when he was on his knees sucking Eddie off, he always looks so happy, like he likes doing it, like he loves doing it, like it isn’t a chore at all. Like he, oh, God, like he wants it, like he wants what Eddie gives to him, like he likes it, like he _loves_ it, loves Eddie’s cock and Eddie’s come and Eddie’s body and Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

And Eddie, oh, Jesus, Richie, he loves sucking off Richie, he likes how thick Richie’s dick is, he likes how it fills his mouth, he likes how Richie cries when Eddie squeezes Richie’s fat fucking balls in his hand and eats the pulses of pre-come that drip out of his red slit, he likes how Richie squirms under him and rubs his hips in the sheets and grabs at the headboard, he likes how Richie arches his back so his wide chest widens and his nipples, so sensitive and so hard and so hairy, are like hard invitations. He likes licking each stripe of come from Richie’s dick and eating it, the salt flavor, the slimy texture, the bitter aftertaste, the way it sticks to his teeth and marbles his tongue. He likes how Richie begs him and sobbing says, “Eddie, Eddie, Eds, Eds, I love you, fuck, fuck me, Eddie, I love you,” with each pull on his cock.

What a miracle! Christ! What the fuck! His whole life Eddie had never known you could enjoy sex, that someone could love you and enjoy sex with you, that it was good, that it felt good, that after you’d fucked you would turn to each other and plant aimless, open-mouthed kisses on each other’s sweaty bodies and each kiss was like a fruiting bloom that took root in your skin and made more love inside of you.

Now Richie panting leaves off Eddie’s neck and grinds that fat cock of his against Eddie’s thigh and complains, “What the fuck, Eds, I’m forty-eight, I can’t just fucking go off in my shorts,” but he presses his fucking dick to Eddie’s hard thigh and just rubs there against Eddie.

“Don’t you fucking dare, bro,” says Eddie, “we still have make-up on,” and Richie laughs then groans as Eddie rolls his hips so his own dick rides up Richie’s thigh.

“I thought you liked fucking me with my face on,” says Richie breathless.

“This isn’t your face,” says Eddie, “it’s not the right make-up, stop laughing, you’re such an asshole.”

“Sorry, baby,” Richie says in the fluttering low voice of Miss Ridley, “I forgot to pack the mascara. Guess you’ll just have to make do.”

“Richie,” says Eddie, “shut up.”

He doesn’t.

iii: _children in the quarry, bodies in the silt._

“Last one in!” “Last one in!” “L-last one—”

They leapt from the cliff into the afternoon sun, the air so saturated with summer rain you thought you might hang there suspended, Wile E. Coyote in the moment before the plunge. 

You plunged. Four cherry bombs or maybe now seven, pitched down into the quarry. Bev hit the water like a javelin, her feet pointed. Mike, tugging his legs into a cannonball, hit it like a World War II mine. At the Derry Community Pool (integrated since 1976!) signs posted along the chain link fence described the injuries you could incur if you jumped into the deep end with someone else; but at the quarry the Losers were invincible. The water leapt up and took them tender into its murky depths.

Under the water their limbs flashed. Stan hoved into view. His eyes were closed, his lashes unseen. His arms made bras croisé. 

Eddie kicked for the surface. The waving sheet broke over his head. He sneezed out water and rubbed it from his eyes. An arm bumped his hip. He grabbed for it and pulled. Mike emerged beside him, shaking the water from his eyes and smiling even before he opened them.

“Hey, Eddie.”

“Hey, Mike. Hey, do you ever wonder how many microbes are in this water and what they’d look like if we put them under a microscope like the one in Mr. Dale’s class? Sorry,” Eddie added. He’d forgotten Mike was home-schooled.

“I don’t know,” said Mike. He thought, bobbing. “But I got a microscope at home. My dad showed me how to use it.”

“You do? How come I never saw it?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Because I don’t let you upstairs in my room. You wear your shoes in the house.”

“So? Everybody wears their shoes inside except I guess if they’re Chinese.”

“White people wear their shoes inside,” said Mike. “That’s why you don’t have carpets.”

“I have carpets.”

“That’s why I don’t go to your house.”

It was Sonia was why Mike didn’t go to the Kaspbrak house; but they’d seen Bill come up sputtering and brushing his floppy hair out of his face and Mike struck out with his arms in a workman’s breaststroke toward him. Eddie frowned after Mike and thought about it, the hardwood, the carpets, the mud caked into his shoe treads.

Then Richie, hollering “Eds, m’lad!” in the British guy, jumped on Eddie’s back and bore him shrieking into the water. Beneath the water Eddie punched Richie in his skinny pale chest. The lake water slowed the motion; it damped the violence. Richie, laughter an explosion of bubbles, slapped back. Eddie kicked and Richie kicked too, and Eddie got his arm around Richie’s neck and pulled.

They came up again, both gasping. “I’ll kick your ass!” Eddie shouted into Richie’s face. He lodged a foot in Richie’s gut.

“Edsy, my boy, you ain’t nothin’ but a shrimp!” Richie shrieked with delight even as Eddie scaled him. “Yer a cotton puff! Yer a flea!” Then Eddie shoved him down by the shoulders and Richie went, grabbing at Eddie’s ankles as he thrust deeper into the lake shadows and the stirring silt.

They fought again, wrestling. Eddie’s breath washed out of him, bubbles hurrying in a traffic jam with Richie’s breath to pop at the surface. He was laughing too, Eddie. His grip was tight, Richie’s slippery. He was uncoordinated more often those days, that summer, Richie suddenly unable to get a hold on Eddie. Like that, Richie let him go and pushed up for the air.

Eddie swiped at his leg. His fingers brushed at the bottom of Richie’s foot. Then he was gone. So Eddie followed, his chest burning, lungs sore. He broke through the water. The world had gone. Everything was a sheet of black. Only the water and Eddie remained. 

A pair of glasses floated by Eddie. One of the lenses was fractured. He took the glasses in his hand. Blood had seeped into the spaces between the cracks. They were men’s glasses, far too large for Eddie’s face, and tortoiseshell. 

Somewhere a man sobbed. Eddie looked. He saw nothing. The glasses were so large. The plastic had chilled. X-Ray glasses, Eddie thought. Like the ones on the backs of comic books. Richie and Eddie had saved their money one month to buy a pair but they hadn’t done shit. 

Eddie raised the glasses hesitantly. The feel of them made his palms itch. He held the glasses to his face.

A man was in the water with Eddie. He was ten feet away at the most, and he was alone with his shoulders hunched and a hand over his eyes as he cried. He’d a brown shirt on. His hair stuck in dark, brownish curls to his ears. 

Shoving the glasses to his eyes, Eddie sank lower in the water, so that it nearly touched his nose. The man was big, huge, but bent as if he wanted to be smaller, and he wouldn’t stop crying. He cried like his heart had died. Eddie thought that was how you cried when something like your heart died. 

He was afraid to reach out to him. He wanted to. He thought the man needed a friend. But he was strange, a stranger, Eddie, warned his mother, and you don’t know what strange men want. You stay away from them, Eddie. 

But I know him, Eddie thought. I do. 

The man sniffed. He wiped at his eyes. He was snotty and grime had crusted in his hair and there were dark stains on his shirt, horrible stains. He looked at the water. His eyes were red. He was squinting.

Eddie treaded water. Small droplets dripped from the end of the man’s nose. He wiped at his lip. You can’t hurt me, Eddie decided. I killed a fucking clown.

“Hey, um,” Eddie called, “are these your glasses? I found them.” He held the glasses out to the man.

The man looked at him. His hair was wild. His eyes were wild. Eddie stared at him in astonishment as the man looked back at him.

“Eddie?” said the man, in a rough nasal voice that crumpled.

Eddie thought: Richie? and threw the glasses at him and dove back into the water. The water had gone black too. He drifted in it and something touched his ankle and in a panic he drew in a breath and the breath was air. He dove deeper, farther, away and away and away.

He heard his heart beating. It wasn’t his heart. It was a slow beat, a long drum. Eddie said, “Stop! Go away! Get the fuck away from me!” and turned with his ferocity to bite at the man. Instead he froze, hanging there in the water with his arms at strange angles and his hair a dirty halo.

Slowly through the water something swam to him: a turtle, he saw, and the heartbeat was the movement of its vast fins.

A drone sounded in Eddie’s ears. A terrible drone. A horrendous sound. This was the noise that lived before the universe lived. It hummed without rising or falling in his skull.

The turtle swam toward him. Each of its eyes was a thousand stars squirming against one another, and the stars gave off no light but moved as if struggling to be born. 

Eddie’s breath expulsed. The bubbles were stars too. He was alone in the black with the stars and the scream of pre-birth and god, and god, and GOD, WHO CAME TO HIM THROUGH THE WATER AND THE WATER WAS THE MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH CAME GOD.

iv. _i like your body. i like what it does,_

Now Eddie closes the hotel door and locks it, first the deadbolt then the chain at the top, and when he has done Richie with a hand on Eddie’s shoulder turns him so that his back is to the door and Richie now cupping Eddie’s face crowds against him to press a kiss to his cheek, a kiss to the other cheek this one to linger at the puckered scar tissue, a third overflowing the sides of the philtrum over Eddie’s lips. 

Eddie reaches calmly to the side and flicks the light switch. The bulb in its crystal bowl casing above them, this blazes. 

Richie is not so much taller than Eddie. Five inches (says Eddie), maybe six (says Richie). But he’s built on a larger frame than Eddie, his shoulders wider, his hips thicker, the set of his chest and his thighs and his belly broader one way and fuller the other, so that even as Eddie can with some small effort rise to bite at Richie’s jaw, Richie nevertheless envelops him.

They are both of them gym-goers though they work with different equipment. Eddie’s body burns thin. His muscles define. His bones and the shapes of his tendons force lean lines. The nature of his exercises has changed with the legacy of his spine but most of his routine he retains. The treadmill, this is mostly lost to him. He swims instead, an hour a day, the water clean and cool and chlorinated against the threat of microbial life to a degree of visual clarity not to be found in nature. 

Richie who prefers weights, the bench and the presses for arms and chest and legs, he claims dissatisfaction at times with the make of his body, with the results he achieves. No cut abs for Richie, no outlined biceps; the muscles of his thighs and calves do not show corded and pulling at bone. He layers thick muscle, strong muscle, and his body generates likewise thicker wedges of subcutaneous fat as padding against violence and wear.

The weight of him against Eddie, as he presses Eddie to the door, as those oak-like legs settle to his either side: Eddie drifts delirious with it. He loves the muscle of Richie. He loves the fat of him. He likes to see how the distribution of both pulls as Richie stretches shirtless in the morning, his chest swelling with a breath, the barrel of his torso dark with hair. 

Now, now, now, he bites at Richie’s jaw with hard teeth and licks through the gap at the grey-specked hair of his beard. The hairs bristle. They scour his tongue. Eddie, half-hard, pleasurable with the heat in him, licks again with each bite. It is an animal pleasure, cousin or grand-aunt to the impulses that drive Eddie to lick the sweat out of Richie’s armpits, to bury his nose in the curling and sweat-tacky pubic hairs around Richie’s dick and breathe deep. He wants to eat the sweats and stinks of Richie’s body. He wants to bind Richie to the bed and bite at his nipples, lick at them, fill himself dizzy with the earthen realities of Richie’s body beneath his body. 

He tells these things to Richie between kisses and between bites. Richie, his nose buried in the hairs behind Eddie’s ear, laughs. He says into Eddie’s ear, “Get this crud off my face first,” and nips at the lobe.

In the bathroom they take turns cleaning each other’s faces of screen make-up with the cleansers Eddie had packed, nicked out of the cabinet at home. The routine of the double cleanse is calming, calming but not damping. Richie crosses his eyes at Eddie and sticks out his tongue, and Eddie pretends to drop a pump of cleansing oil on his tongue. He laughs. Eddie says, “Stay still, I have to rub it in,” and Richie closes his eyes. In little soothing circles he massages the oil across Richie’s cheeks, his forehead, the lids of his eyes. In even exchange Richie performs the same for Eddie. His thumbs spread wider. His nails are clipped short. The oil moves smoothly and hand-warmed across Eddie’s sharp-boned face. 

They rinse with warm water. They cleanse again. 

“It’s mediocre crap,” says Richie. “My stuff at home’s better.” He flicks water droplets at Eddie.

“Brush your teeth,” says Eddie. He flicks Richie with water, too.

Richie, grinning, glows. His face is rosy clean, the expanse of his cheeks sweetly softened by the wines of an earlier hour. His hair, loosed from whatever gels they’d brushed into it to give the curls definition and delineation, is reminiscent of bed. Arousal pulses again in Eddie’s gut. He pushes the brush into Richie’s hand and reaches for his own.

Their feet shuffle. Eddie rubs his toes along the top of Richie’s hairy foot. Hobbit feet, that’s what Richie has. The hairs scratch at the tender undersides of Eddie’s toes, in the slight arch where they blend with the rest of the foot. Some frizzling thing runs up Eddie’s legs. It spurts out on the left at his hip. He rubs his toes against Richie again.

These little routines. Brushing their teeth together, a competition. Who makes more froth. Who spits out the most. Who can go the longest, brushing. Who can make the silliest face in the mirror. 

At night in their shared bed after the occasional trip to the club, Richie still half in his make-up, lips coral pink, false eyelashes thick-fanned and black over the left eye and the right eye bared, green contacts in place: he might drag a clean make-up brush in sworls across Eddie’s chest. The hairs so fine on the brush, he shivers under it. Richie’s honey gold wig falling, a gleaming curtain, from his right shoulder, and those hairs sweeping at Eddie’s cheek, his jaw, as Richie twirled the brush over Eddie’s nipple and slid his own knee with aching slowness along the inside of Eddie’s thigh. How Eddie’s cock beat with the force of his heart and the blood coursing through him. Dress with its slitted skirt and deep-cut back on the floor. Richie in thigh-high stockings and nothing else but that wig. Eddie would curl his fingers in the wig and gently pull at it til Richie sat back and took it off properly, shaking his head free of it then free of the hair cap, his dark brown-black curls sweat-formed to his scalp.

Richie spits toothpaste into the sink. Eddie, triumphant, spits his out next. They share a cup of water to swill and spit out the rest. Richie stretches. His shoulders pull at the jacket. 

He says, “Well, buddy, what’s next?”

Eddie toys with the paper cup. He glances up through his lashes at Richie. In a shy sort of voice he says, “I don’t know. I’ve… I’ve never really done this before.”

Richie lights up with laughter. Grinning, smug, Eddie pitches the paper cup into the trash and reaches for Richie’s crumpled tie.

v. _i now who have seen the face of god and thus beheld beheld beheld be_

They carried him out of the soiling water and the sucking mud. First Richie carried him then Ben carried him then Mike carried him then they bore him up between them; and there was much WAILING! FOR EDDIE KASPBRAK! BORN OF FLESH, BORNE FROM MUD, RETURNED AT LAST TO BONE AND THE SOLACE OF THE GRAVE! 

He stood on the unending pane of black glass and the turtle came to him and unto him did GOD speak and what GOD DID SAY TO HIM it said thus, it said it thus, THUSLY DID GOD SPAKE UNTO HIM! 

EDWARD KASPBRAK, said god who was maturin, BEHOLD FOR THIS IS YOUR DEATH WHICH I HAVE TAKEN FROM YOU. 

Slowly with that droning in his ears, that drone that was indeed the WAILING OF THE BLACK SPACES BETWIXT THE STARS WHERE TRAVELS NONE BUT GOD THE TURTLE VOMITING AND SHITTING LIFE, Eddie looked down into and then through the glass and there he did behold his death.

Little man. His jaw slack. Hands like pale, broken birds gone limp in the expanse of his lap. He was seated with his back to rock. One of his feet had tilted to the side. There was in him a great hole out of which all the good and the living of him had pumped out with the pulse of a heart, failing.

SO BRAVE, EDDIE, said god who was maturin. YOU ARE SO BRAVE. 

Beneath the glass came Richie staggering and covered in blood and grime and alien filth to grab at Eddie to feel at his face to hold those lax hands to say Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Eddie in the darkness dropped to his knees. He dropped to his hands. He pressed his mouth to the glass. His breath made white and frosting fractalines against it. 

He said, “Richie.” He said, “Richie, I’m right here.”

And so god did say, EDDIE, YOU ARE STONE COLD FUCKING DEAD. BRAVE, SO VERY BRAVE, BRAVER THAN ANYONE, YOU WHO SAW THE TRUTH OF MY and god said a word that sounded like BROTHER and like MOTHER and like TWIN and like CHILD and like LOVERLOVERLOVER. BUT, continued god, YOU ARE DING DONG DITCHING THAT BOD, EDDIE MY LOVE.

His fingers curled against the glass. His breath had migrated virus-like to make ice over his knuckles.

“Don’t call me that.”

BUT YOU ARE, said god. YOU ARE MY LOVE. OH, EDDIE WHOM I HAVE LOVED. OH, MY BRAVE SWEET ONE. I HAVE KNOWN YOU FROM THE MOMENT OF MY BIRTH SPAT OUT OF THE VOID A PEANUT SHELL WITH THE SALT SUCKED OUT OF IT AND MY BODY SWOLLEN WITH IMPREGNATION EVERY STAR A BURNING FETAL TRUTH TUCKED INTO THE FLESH OF ME THE WHOLE OF MY OWN VAST SHELL A WOMB FOR THE UNIVERSE TO BE BORN AS YOU WERE BORN BEAUTIFUL THING MY EDDIE MY LOVE 

Through the glass he watched with ice glazing his eyes as his mother birthed him. A man stood smoking in the hall. He had Eddie’s hands, cupped around the flame point of the cigarette. Eddie watched this too: cancer boiled and bubbled and brewed in Francis Kaspbrak’s honeycomb lungs.

Now gently god said unto Eddie, IT IS A HARD-KNOCK LIFE. SOMETIMES YOU JUST GET THE RAW FUCKING DEAL.

“Aren’t you god?” said Eddie through frozen lips, through teeth bared like mountain stones. “Can’t you fucking fix it?”

SO HERE’S THE DEAL AS YOU PROPOSE IT, MY LITTLE RISK ANALYST, said god. I CAN FIX EVERYTHING STARTING FROM THE FIRST TIME ONE MONKEY HIT ANOTHER MONKEY OVER THE HEAD WITH A ROCK AND ATE OF THAT DEAD MONKEY’S BRAINS. I’M TALKING WAY BEFORE HUMANS CAME ALONG AND FUCKED EACH OTHER SIDEWAYS. BUT LOOK AT IT FROM THE LONG ANGLE, EDS—

“Don’t call me that!”

I’LL CALL YOU ANYTHING I GOD DAMN WELL LIKE, said god and this was the voice that shattered the ice and it shattered the glass and it shattered the frail stupid human bones inside Eddie so that he went limp all over and fell into nothing.

He drifted without thought or word. Then god came again to him and said in a whisper that yet thundered,

I WILL TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR WILL. I WILL EAT YOUR EVERY CHOICE. DO YOU SEE NOW? DO YOU UNDERSTAND? WHAT BRAVERY, EDDIE. YOU SAW THE SHAPE OF MY and that word came again, that terrible word, AND YOU SAW WHAT IT WOULD BE AND WHAT IT HAD BEEN AND YOU TOOK UP YOUR LONGARM AND YOU CLAIMED OUT OF THE LIGHT THE ONE THAT YOU CHOSE, THEN, TO LIVE. SO WE MAKE THIS DEAL, EDDIE, AND I’LL TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS, IS YOU LOSE THE SHAPE OF YOU AND THEN YOU LOSE RICHIE, BECAUSE WITHOUT WILL WHAT ARE YOU BUT CATTLE FOR THE FEEDING OF THINGS GREATER AND STRONGER OF FORM AND WILL THAN YOU? 

YOU BECOME THE SHAPE OF FEAR AND YOU BECOME THE SHAPE OF MEAT AND SO RICHIE BECOMES THE FLY IN THE WEB FOR THE SPIDER FROM HELL, OR MAYBE RICHIE NEVER PULLS ITS ATTENTION AND MIKE IS THE FLY, MAYBE YOU ALL DIE TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS EARLIER, MAYBE YOU’RE NEVER BORN, DID YOU THINK THERE WAS NEVER A MOMENT WHEN YOUR FATHER LOOKED ACROSS A DIMLY LIT ROOM FILLED WITH SMOKE AND WITH DISCO AND SAW YOUR MOTHER AND MADE A CHOICE TO LOVE HER DID YOU THINK SHE DID NOT HAVE A MOMENT OF DOUBT WHEN SHE SAW THAT SHE WAS PREGNANT AND INSIDE HER GREW A STAR AN ALIEN A PARASITE DID YOU THINK! roared god, THAT THERE WOULD NOT BE A CONSEQUENCE!

SO I WILL EAT YOUR SHAPE, said god, AND YOU WILL BE AS NOTHING, YOU WILL BE AS A WORM, _THE WOLF SPIDER EATS THE CRICKET AND THE WORM, THE WOLF SPIDER LIVES IN THE MUD AND THE SAND ALONG STREAMS AND LAKES._

“I want to live,” said Eddie. His voice rose. He said, “We deserve to live! Fuck you! We killed IT!”

LIFE’S A BITCH, said god. WE WENT OVER THAT. SO IS IT YES OR IS IT NO, EDWARD FRANCIS KASPBRAK, IS IT THE THORN OR IS IT THE WORM? 

Eddie breathed in. Water filled his lungs. He choked on it and vomited out a torrent of blood and thick tissue and water, and water, dark water and clear water, salt and fresh.

“You're an asshole,” he said tiredly. “You could have done something. You could have. But you didn't.”

I HAVE SEEN EVERY DEATH ON EVERY WORLD, said god with a sorrow so vast you could sink into it and never rise again. EVERY MOMENT OF SUFFERING. EVERY ACT OF GRIEF AND EVERY ACT OF HATE. THEY CHOOSE IT AND I LET THEM CHOOSE IT. DERRY GAVE IT STRENGTH. PERHAPS WITH YOUR DEAL THEIR CHOICES WILL NOT FEED IT. OR YOU MIGHT GIVE IT POWER ENOUGH TO EAT YOUR WORLD. OR MAYBE NOTHING AT ALL WILL CHANGE. I DON'T KNOW IF ANYTHING EVER CHANGES.

“But you're god.”

WHAT DOES THAT MATTER? said god. YES OR NO, EDDIE.

He said, “No. No, you sad, stupid fucking turtle. Not if Richie would die, or Mike, or any of them.” He closed his eyes. His chest had begun to ache. It had begun to burn.

MY BRAVE LITTLE DARLING, said god as a hole opened in Eddie. NOW WAKE THE FUCK UP.

The turtle swallowed Eddie. 

vi. _WAKE THE FUCK UP_

He opened his eyes. Richie, flushed and wet-eyed, leaned back. He was smiling. His hands in Eddie’s hands were warm. His fingers tightened around Eddie’s hands. He mouthed, “I love you,” to Eddie and the rings on their hands matched.

Eddie looking up at Richie said—

He opened his eyes. Hugh looked into his own cup of coffee. He’d a light scarf on, something thin and airy that made Hugh look washed out. The air sat heavy between them. Under the table, Eddie clenched at his cane for support. Hugh said, “I knew you were in love with him,” quietly but not kindly.

Eddie gripped the cane and said—

He opened his eyes. Myra stood with him on the courthouse steps. Her eyes were red-ringed. She said, “What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t have just said something before the fucking _wedding_ ,” and she wasn’t wrong; it hadn’t been fair to her; none of it had been fair to her, but God damn it, it hadn’t been fair to Eddie either, and that was the problem with them, wasn’t it, the other problem, the problem that wasn’t _you’re gay and she’s not_ : they’d never understood one another. 

But it was over now. It was over and there wasn’t any more need for shouting or tearful explanations or pleading for the understanding that wasn’t there in either of them. 

Tired, his back aching, his knee ready to lock up, Eddie turned to Myra and said—

He opened his eyes. The nurse had propped him up with pillows. He’d fallen asleep again on the drip. The room was dim. A light in the corner by the second visitor’s chair was on and it cast a long and strangely formed shadow. Someone was breathing loudly.

Eddie blinked sleepily and looked at his arms. He stopped. Richie had pulled the other visitor’s chair beside the bed and sat in it facing the headboard. Someone had put a thin hospital blanket on him, but it had fallen down his back. He was snoring slightly, his arms crossed and his head dipped to them. He’d an elbow was propped on the bed. He was close enough Eddie could see the spot on his crown where the hair might thin.

Eddie blinked again. His head tipped to one side. He had to fuss to straighten. There was something very wrong with his body, he thought. There was something, he thought. There was something. He could not recall. The distorted, faint lamplight made his head ache.

He looked at Richie sleeping so uncomfortably beside him and Eddie said in a low creaking voice, “Trashmouth,” and moved his fingers as much as he could, not much at all but enough that he could just brush his pinky against Richie’s elbow. Richie made a little noise. His head dipped lower. His glasses hung very near to the end of his nose.

Eddie watched him. Then he slept too.

  
  
**i like my body when it is with your body.**

He’d stopped beside the bed, hand stilling at his wrist where he worked on the cuff. 

Richie touched the small of his back with four fingertips in the shape, almost, of a diamond. “You okay there, big guy?” He smoothed his palm to Eddie’s back. “Lost you there for a minute.”

Eddie popped the second button free and shook his head slightly. He wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was as if he’d remember something then forgotten it in the moment of remembering. His interest in chasing it faded. 

“Long day,” he offered.

Richie snapped off a breezy Reporter Rick: “You’re tellin’ me, hotshot. What else is new on the streets?” He rubbed his hand along Eddie’s back and turned gently to face him. “How’s the back?”

The impatience of the elevator had seeped away. His back ached. His hip felt raw. Regardless of what they did tonight, Eddie would need the chair tomorrow. Richie read it easily off him.

“Hey, don’t worry,” said Richie. “You can still screw me brainless. We just have to do it different.” He fitted his hands together behind Eddie. “I have excellent reviews.”

“I know,” said Eddie, “it’s just that.” He grimaced and let his head fall against Richie’s chest. “I wanted to fuck you. I mean, I wanted to _really_ fuck you.” 

“Tell me more.”

“Don’t want to,” said Eddie darkly. “Now that I can’t do it.”

“C’mon,” Richie wheedled, “tell me, tell me. I wanna know. What kind of fucked up shit were you going to do with my innocent little asshole?”

“ _To_ your innocent little asshole.”

“Ooh, he’s still got some feist in him. Okay.” They swayed together, Richie rubbing his thumbs into the crooked nest of muscle in Eddie’s back. “What didst thou intend to do un _to_ my innocent little asshole?”

Eddie sighed. He hooked his chin on Richie’s shoulder. “It wasn’t that big a plan,” he admitted. “I just wanted to get you on all fours and fuck you ‘til you cried.”

Richie’s laugh shook them both. “Okay, well, that’s not that hard to do. You freak. My tears get you wet? They get you lubed up?”

“Every day you fucking say things to me,” said Eddie. “You just say this crap to me.”

“I can’t help it, I just open my mouth and words start falling out.” Richie stroked his fingers along the curl of Eddie’s ass. He nuzzled at Eddie’s jaw. “Hey, Eds. You getting wet right now? Thinking about it?” Eddie flushed and set his jaw. Richie pressed a rasping kiss to the taut corner of it. “You wanna try another classic, why don’t I just sit on your dick, huh? You like that, Eddie. You like when I sit on your dick and squeeze.” Richie, his palm slid low, got a handful of Eddie’s ass and squeezed it. 

Eddie grunted. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah.” His hip spat sparks. His dick rubbed damply in his underwear. 

“That okay?” Richie rasped his beard down Eddie’s throat and Eddie, shivering, tipped his head back to let Richie rub his face lower still. “I feel very comfortable with that as a compromise.”

“What compromise?” 

“Me getting fucked crying,” said Richie, “and you still having legs tomorrow.”

“They’re not gonna fall off just because I fuck your ass.”

“They’re not?” Richie pulled away to scowl. “Hey, have you not been fucking me at full strength?”

“Jesus, not now,” said Eddie. “I’m too horny to do this right now.”

“And I’m too horny for you not to be giving me one hundred and ten percent in the bedroom, Kaspbrak, you little turd. How hard could you fuck me?”

“I’d show you but then we’d both need a chair,” snapped Eddie.

Richie’s eyes shone behind his glasses. He stripped out of his jacket and started working on his own cuffs. As ever, he was late. 

“Nah,” he said, “I could just sit in your lap. Rub against you the whole day.”

“We’d break the chair and I’m tired of replacing it. Do you know how expensive this tech is? And then we take it on a plane?”

“You could get your dick in me,” said Richie. He popped his suspenders, one then two, the leather slithering over his thick shoulders, his heavy arms. He started peeling out of his button-down. The undershirt had light staining at the pits. “We’d wear a blanket over us and I’d hold your cock in me the whole day. Feel it every time you get hard. Clench down on you whenever you got sleepy.”

“I oughtta gag you,” said Eddie, furious. “I oughtta put your tie in your mouth.”

Richie sucked his lips in and let them slowly pop free from his teeth. He flashed his lashes once. “You like it, Eds. You like my trashmouth.”

“I like it better when it’s full.” Eddie unbuttoned his fitted trousers. Richie’s hands brushed his away. “I like it better when you shut the fuck up.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” said Richie in a soft sing-song. “Although yeah, you’re always trying to stuff shit in my mouth. Ravioli, new desserts, your fat dick…”

Eddie groaned as Richie pulled the belt from him and fitted his thumbs down beneath trousers and underwear. “Shut up. Your dick’s fat. I’m just. Average.”

Richie licked at Eddie’s temple and grinned, pressing his teeth to the skin there. “I dunno, Eddie. Gosh, it always fills me up.”

“Stop touching me or I’m going to fucking jump you,” said Eddie. He sat on the hotel bed while Richie, pleased with himself, did quick work of shucking the rest of his clothes.

Eddie took more care rolling his trousers down, mindful of the bulk of his leg brace. When the trousers were free he removed his leg brace, loosening the straps and unhooking the metal frame. He did all this separately from his underwear. 

For the underwear, Richie joined him in bed to tease: to get his hands everywhere the way he always liked to get them, right in the way. As Eddie struggled to get his briefs down, Richie pumped his dick for him in a languid manner. His hand was too dry, the slight calluses rough. Eddie ran over with goose pimples at the heat of it, the feel of his foreskin dragging back from the swollen cock head. 

With the underwear nearly to his knees, Eddie gave up and settled for worming them slowly away with his right foot. He pulled Richie to him to kiss, long and wetly, their tongues tangling and Richie’s beard rubbing a familiar rash into Eddie’s clean-shaven jaw. Eddie arched. He let Richie slide his hands between Eddie’s thighs to stroke at the skin so tender there. He wound fingers in Richie’s messy, half-gelled hair and tugged so that Richie knew to reach without looking for the silicon lube he’d set so helpfully as they unpacked on the bedside table. 

Only very occasionally did they indulge in penetrative anal sex. “Butt-fucking,” Richie would say, “you can call it butt-fucking. The ol’ rump hump. The gut dicking.” Then Eddie would surge and push him over and they’d wrestle, grinding against each other. Intercrural was the preference, or simulated sex, rubbing against one another and kissing, biting, gagging for it. 

And God, Eddie was right in the elevator; he did love to blow Richie. He loved to make Richie squirm and press helplessly deeper for more. He loved to take more and then to take and take as Richie panted and groaned and scrabbled with his huge body bucking as he shot come down Eddie’s throat. Richie liked best to kiss and to hitch their legs together so that each ground against another lube-greased thigh, their chests together, every kiss a frantic gasping, softly mouthing thing. 

Now, in bed, as Eddie propped a pillow under his back and Richie spread lube on his hand, Eddie watched as Richie reached behind himself. His face twinged: a pinch and then a sensual relief, as Richie pulled free a small plug.

“What the fuck, Richie,” said Eddie. 

Richie grinned at him. His glasses had slipped low on his nose. With a coordinated toss of his head, Richie knocked them more or less back into place.

“I’m on to you, Kaspbrak,” said Richie. “I know your plans. I can read your shit like a book.” His chest seized and expanded. He fumbled fingers into his ass and sighed. Richie’s dick bobbed thickly in the air. It always did crook to the left. Unlike Eddie, he was circumcised, without the roll of skin beneath the exposed head. Eddie licked at his teeth. He saw Richie watching him, all of him, the puncture scar like a bowl in his chest and the flash of his mouth, and so Eddie made a show of licking his lips, too, and reaching to touch the nipple nearest to his wound. I’m alive, the gesture said. I’m alive and I want you. I want you. I want _you_.

Flickers of gratification moved across Richie’s face. His eyelids shivered. Rich Tozier liked a good fingering, his fingers or Eddie’s fingers, toying at the rim and scissoring inside, pulling him wide to fit in another finger, or a thumb. What a thing to know when Rich went on-stage in his usual stage wear to perform. 

“I wish I could fuck you and suck your dick at the same time,” Eddie blurted out.

Richie’s hips jerked down. He swore. 

“Don’t break your wrist,” said Eddie. “If you break your wrist that’s like four surgeries and that’s just to try and get back use of your hand, it doesn’t even mean you _will_ get back use of your hand—”

“God, you’re so hot,” said Richie. “Annoying, but hot. Hand me the lube if you want me to ride your dick.”

“This is for _you_ ,” said Eddie. He grabbed the bottle of lube, discarded on the sheets. Richie had typically left it half-capped, and so it dashed a squirt on the sheets. “I’m doing this for you, on your big day where everyone recognizes that _you’re_ hot.”

“I’ve never been hot a day in my life.” Richie squirted lube into his palms and rubbed it up quickly. “Admit it, Eds, this is a pity fuck.”

“I married you.”

“They were all pity fucks, Henrique,” Richie said scornfully.

“I literally could not be any harder right now,” said Eddie. “You’re so fucking hot. I don’t know why you don’t do a shirtless calendar for charity so I can bring it in to work.”

Richie wrapped his hands around Eddie’s dick, and Eddie moaned at the warmed lube, at the familiar heat and heft of Richie’s hands smoothing the silky skin and clenching around him so that Eddie, mindless, fucked up once, twice. Richie’s eyebrows shot up.

“Huh. I really don’t think you could get harder.”

“’Cause I couldn’t stop thinking about your dick,” Eddie gasped. His hips bucked again. Stars lanced his spine. His eyes rolled. Christ, Richie’s _grip_. “Fuck. I almost blew you in the elevator. I wanted to blow you on-stage.”

“You did not,” said Richie with delight. He rubbed his thumb along Eddie’s dick slit like you’d rub a cat’s head. Precome pulsed around his thumb. “You’d hate that. People looking at us.”

“I didn’t want them to watch,” said Eddie. “I just wanted.” His chest heaved with his breath, hard-coming with each pull on his cock. “I wanted. Fuck! I wanted you to believe it when they gave you that dumbass award.”

“Blowjobs can’t cure my insecurities.”

“They can if I fucking commit.”

“So what, now you’re just going to blow me every day now?”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “Yeah! Come up here right now, I’ll fucking suck your brain out of your dick. Why the fuck is your dick so big anyway. Idiot.”

Richie giggled, that convulsive high-pitched thing that made him tremble. “And then came the day he realized,” said Richie, “that when Eddie called him idiot, what he really meant was _lover boy._ ”

“Sit on my dick or shut up,” said Eddie.

“Tough crowd,” said Richie, and he rose over Eddie; he loomed over him; he gleamed already with sweat and shone flushed red, and he held Eddie’s dick in his hand as he eased down on to it.

The head of Eddie’s dick caught on the rim, then pushed through, and they both of them moaned with the feel of it. Richie sank helplessly down the shaft. He was so tight around Eddie, so tight and so unbearably hot. With each increment Richie squeezed and then drew a breath and relaxed. Eddie’s hips shifted restlessly from side to side in something of a half-circle. Richie’s ass settled on his gravity-dragged balls. 

Richie panted. He bit his lip. Sweat made wet swirls of his chest hair. His belly fluttered, the muscles there tightening then easing then tightening again. Liminal graces illuminated Eddie’s nervous system. The heat in the pit of his stomach pitched higher. His balls were already so tight. Richie’s throat worked. He closed his eyes a moment and swallowed, working again.

“How, uh,” said Richie at last. “How do you want this?”

“Just you,” said Eddie. He knew it was nonsense as he said it. What had Richie asked him? He couldn’t think for the weight of Richie on him, even as Richie did his best not to settle fully on Eddie’s hips. “Just. Richie. Richie, you.”

Richie grabbed at his glasses and tossed them to the bed. Unsteadily he said, “Whatever you want. Whatever you want, Eddie. Eddie, my love,” and slowly he slipped up the length of Eddie’s cock with his insides fluttering, Jesus, gripping at Eddie like he didn’t want to lose an inch of him. 

Eddie’s moan came highly from his throat. 

They hadn’t turned the lamps on, only the light in the entryway. It cast silhouettes against the wall and the drapes drawn across the window. Eddie thought deliriously of the shadowplay they put on, of the movement of their shadows fucking too as if they were echoes and there were other echoes of Richie and Eddie and they fucked too. They fucked as love-show. 

Richie fucked himself on Eddie. Lube squelched. Eddie moaned again. He ran his hands over his own chest, pinching at his nipples. Shyly he traced the shape of his healed chest. In the popping star pleasure of sex the skin, folded and sewn together to make a seal over the puncture in the wake of the draining, the other surgeries, the months of healing, that skin felt as the rest of his skin did, like something living that spittered with this want. Kiss me, touch me, consecrate my body with your tongue and your hands and your come. Richie, Richie. 

Richie rolled his shoulders. His chest thrust out. Eddie grabbed at a pectoral and held it tight in his hand. His thumbnail scraped at the nipple. Richie gasped and moaned in his turn. He fell more swiftly. 

Sweat pooled between them. Eddie’s hips had begun to move in rhythm with Richie. His dick shoved precome into Richie. His balls ached. He thought about it, about pushing his come deep into Richie, so deep that Richie couldn’t shit it out, so deep he’d be wet with Eddie’s come for hours. 

Eddie groaned out loud and rolled his hips in another circle. Richie made a broken noise. He reached for his dick. Eddie said, “Don’t. Don’t jack off. Don’t jack off, Rich, I’ll make it so good for you,” and Richie said, “Fuck!” and squeezed the base of his dick once and sobbing at last, finally sobbing, he began to fuck on Eddie in earnest. His weight bucked Eddie into the mattress, and Eddie grabbed at Richie’s hips, at his chest, at the rolls of fat over his hips. He moved his hands further back, to grip at Richie’s ass. He pulled at those asscheeks, pulling wide so that if Richie were facing the other way he would see unobstructed his own red, slick cock shoving into Richie. Big Richie. Strong Richie. Richie who had carried him out of the underbelly of Derry and waited for Eddie. 

Eddie was moaning, “ah, ah, ah,” his mouth open, tongue drying. He thrust harder; fuck it. Glass glittered in his knee. Oh, but God, it felt good. Richie felt good. He always felt good to Eddie. Richie said, “Yeah,” again, “Yeah. Yeah, like that, Eddie, just like that, c’mon,” and he bent awkwardly to kiss at the puncture scar, to lave it with his tongue and then press another tender, chaste kiss to the edge of it.

Eddie’s eyes rolled back. He came on the up-thrust, and more on the down-thrust, and again, shooting off in Richie as Richie straightened with his hands one on each of Eddie’s lean breasts and smiled beatific for the satisfaction of Eddie coming inside. He made small risings and fallings, nursing Eddie to oversensitivity so that Eddie groaned and said, “Stop, stop, Richie, c’mon,” and Richie laughing breathlessly climbed off him and fell on his side beside Eddie. His dick jutted into Eddie’s thigh. He caught Eddie into a kiss, a deep one, very slow and very slick, their lips wet with it, Richie’s beard shining. 

They kissed like that for long moments, heated moments, as Eddie’s breathing evened and his bones regained their tensile strength. 

Into Richie’s mouth, Eddie murmured, “Lay down,” and Richie blind-eyed and trusting did lay down, and when he had laid down Eddie rose over him like benediction and wrought rapture out of Richie with his mouth; and what they had done with their bodies was love, and it was good.

Yes, thought god, it was good, and the maturin turned away to leave them to it. Into the darkness he moved and he moved with silence, and in the shadows he left small stars puttering awake with their first shy lashes of plasma and flame. This too was good. This too was love.

And in their hotel room, two shadows embraced, and on the bed Richie kissed Eddie softly on his rumpled cheek and said, “I love you,” and held him as his shadow held Eddie's shadow.


	5. Chapter 5

**i’m getting married in the evening.**

They had agreed beforehand to walk to the altar simultaneously, from opposite sides of the small seaside barn. White-painted for weddings and devoted to no faith, the vast open room had been easy to decorate to accommodate at least superficially the Roman Catholicism of the extended Kaspbrak family and the Reform Judaism of the Toziers. 

The Kaspbraks were, to Eddie’s surprise, easily dispatched. Most of his cousins only attended Mass at Christmas and so happily RSVPed, even Chester from Baltimore who wanted to bring his own boyfriend Desmond with him. 

The older generation had largely refused to attend out of protest. Not, as Richie suggested, to the outstanding gayness of it all or, as Eddie had grimly suspected, to the outstanding Jewishness of the groom, but out of disagreement with: the location, the décor, the time of year, the beach, the cost of travel, the cost of new clothes, the horror of a divorced man remarrying, Richie Tozier’s Netflix Comedy Specials, the lack of memorial to Sonia Kaspbrak, confusion as to why Eddie was getting married when he was married to that nice Myra girl, and in one instance the menu offered after the wedding. 

“And also the homophobia and the anti-semitism,” Richie had added, and Eddie had acknowledged this was true.

The Toziers on the other hand had responded with delight. Richie’s reputation within the family was The One We Can’t Get Married. Maggie and Wentworth made a point of sitting on Eddie’s side of the pews, and some branch or other of the family followed them over. The Losers stood rank on the steps, with Naomi and Joan to serve as flower girls. 

Eddie had thought then the barn would look sparsely populated, but on the day of it, peeking in through the side door from the relative warmth of the hallway they’d made of cattle stalls, he was surprised to see so many people had come. They had come for Eddie; they had come for Richie. There were strangers, people Eddie had never met, and yet they were here for him, and they looked happy to have come. 

He stood a moment there as the music began, to look at all those faces. To look at the Losers, grinning and sharing soft jokes with each other. To look across the barn and see, peering out the opposite door, Richie. 

Richie smiled. Even at a distance Eddie could see how it lit his eyes. Eddie mouthed, I love you, and Richie held up his hand as if he wore a baseball mitt, ready to catch whatever Eddie had lobbed his way. 

“Stupid,” Eddie murmured helplessly. 

Naomi walked stately up the aisle, scattering rose petals with gracious aplomb. Joan, four, dawdled, then abandoned her task entirely when she saw her grandfather Uris seated in a pew. Eddie hid his smile behind his hands. 

Then the music changed. 

Eddie opened the door fully. On the far side of the barn, so too did Richie. They stepped out together. The walk was simple. He carried his cane with him, and Richie matched the pace he took; Richie did it easily.

He could not stop sneaking looks at Richie. Each time he glanced over, Richie was glancing at him. His heart trickled merrily. He wanted somehow to laugh. In front of everyone that had come, in front of God and the altar and the rabbi attending, Eddie wanted to laugh. He bit his lip to keep his tongue silent.

The Losers murmured jests to them, congratulations, whispered “I love you, man” with more meaning than any confession Sonia had ever made to Eddie.

They met, Richard and Edward, under the chuppah, finely woven white cloth with a long fringe on two of its four sides. Plain white lights were strung around each of the four poles. The sun outside had begun to set.

The rabbi began to speak. Eddie could not hear him. He was looking up at Richie, whose face had gone still, nearly reverent looking in his turn at Eddie. 

I love you, thought Eddie. He saw it mirrored in Richie’s face. He saw how Richie thought I’m going to marry you, just as Eddie thought it.

An odd, chilling finger crept along Eddie’s upper spine. It touched each of the vertebra. He had a false sense-memory, a thing like a dream, of sitting on the bank of a creek with Richie as children and they were exchanging rings made of grass. 

But of course this had never happened. They had never played at marriage as kids. Eddie hadn’t thought of Richie as someone he might love, and Richie had swallowed every thing he had felt as if he were saving the rest of them from some toxin pulled from a wound.

What if we had? Eddie thought as the rabbi spoke, as he, Edward Kaspbrak, looked into Richard Tozier’s face. What would it have mattered? Would it have changed, if he had loved Richie then? Would they have left Derry together if Richie had asked? 

And forgot the rest of them, whispered something dark and far away: a voice like a roll of thunder. 

Eddie’s fingers were shivering. Richie offered him a hand and Eddie, grateful, his flesh riddled with goosebumps, took what was offered. The ghosts if they were ghosts vanished from the skin of his back. The hand he held was solid, warm, a broad palm that engulfed his own. 

Slightly, where no one else but the rabbi might say, Eddie moved his hand grasping the cane nearer to Richie. Richie looked longly at him and then, very gently, he covered that hand with his own hand and gripped the cane with Eddie. Light limned the dark hairs that dusted the backs of Richie’s hands. 

I love you, thought Eddie fiercely. I love you now; and there was no one who could dare say he did not for to say such a thing was to tell a lie into the mouth of god.

It was time now, said the rabbi, for the grooms to speak their vows.

Eddie beheld Richie. Richie tipped his head. A lock of curling hair dashed across his brow. Go on, he said without speaking. Go on, Eddie. Richie, who had never told him to stop talking, Richie who laughed as Eddie shouted and rambled. Richie whom he married. Richie whom he loved.

You make me strong, went the words. You make me brave.

He drew in breath. He drew in breath to begin. And in all the worlds imagined or true around Eddie, there was stillness. And Eddie said:

**let there be light now within you.**

The bells over the door rang all together. Eddie, having shook the rain out of his umbrella beneath the sidewalk awning, nudged the door shut against the winter rain. The barista at the bar, a burly college-age kid with bright pink hair and several small rings in their ear, said, “Welcome to McCall’s Morning Call,” then returned to conversation with a small woman in an oversized parka. Eddie closed the umbrella.

A coat-hanger, metal bent in the shape of a tree, stood on the inside right of the door. Eddie had put on the forearm crutch that morning. His hip bothered him, knee too, but not so badly he needed the chair. He took the time needed to pull the crutch loose from his wool down jacket and leaned it carefully against the door frame. Shedding his black jacket with similar care, he hung it from one of the many empty branches then zipped it partway closed and tucked the arms behind the bulk. The noise of the zipper interrupted the coffee shop’s playlist, some sad-sounding woman singing about autumn days. He took his crutch up again and fitted it neatly around the meat of his forearm, just short of the elbow. 

Hugh hadn’t arrived, and most of the coffeehouse was empty at the ten o’clock hour. Mindful of the sleek stone floor with his cane, Eddie took a small table in the corner with the window face on his left. A chair with a wrought iron back stood on the other side of the table. Eddie had chosen the faux-leather couch that ran along the wall. He settled against the back of the couch and sighed, unmeaning. Then he took the crutch off again and with some little effort wedged it between himself and the floor to ceiling, dark wood frame that gave out to the glass front.

He looked out the window as he reached, not entirely thinking much of it, to adjust the sit of the new leg brace through his wide-cut trousers. They’d fitted it for him at the clinic but it was a different design and so its presence nagged at him. Neurotic, probably: he thought the irritation might be psychosomatic, and that thought jabbed meanly at the small of his back where it seemed as if everything Eddie felt lived these days. It struck Eddie as a bad joke that he could be nearly forty-four and still have anxiety like a lemur firmly clinging to his neck. 

The rain had gone off, petulant. Now it only drizzled. The New York streets were grey and slick. Patches of black ice lingered on untended walk-ups, the news warned. The poor weather made Eddie’s teeth ache. He tapped his fingers on the tabletop then reached again to tug on the leg brace then, catching himself bending, Eddie set his jaw and sat upright and folded his hands grimly together on the table.

His therapist said this was normal. You couldn’t waste time looking for a cure for something like anxiety. It would be with you the rest of your life. He wanted for there to be a cure. An herbal tea, or a natural pill. Some sort of medical therapy where they pierced your brain with five needles each in a mathematically precise spot. 

Richie said, “I pretend like um, like it’s this stupid gorilla. Like there’s this huge gorilla falling me around everywhere and it’s cool. He’s my buddy. He’s like Kerchak from Tarzan, you know, Tarzan’s dad? And we’re cool but sometimes we gotta beat the shit out of each other.”

So Eddie had started visualizing the lemur. After a month he’d told Richie, “I hate lemurs,” and Richie had said, “Haha, what? Lemurs?” and Eddie said, “If I could strangle a lemur I’d fucking strangle one right now,” and Richie said, “Would it be helpful if I made monkey sounds? We could pretend you have the muscular strength to choke me out,” and then they’d spent half an hour arguing about whether or not lemurs were monkeys.

He rubbed at the ring sitting on his left hand. Outside a woman in a bright coat and elegant heels darted along the sidewalk. She’d a clear umbrella, streaked with droplets. Her face was thickly made up and she ran with expertise even in the stilettos. A sharp thing pulled at Eddie’s heart. He clenched his teeth against it, closed his eyes: drew in a slow breath and held it. When he exhaled again the pain had ebbed. 

The door chimed. He opened his eyes. Hugh stood there in his long brown coat, shaking out his umbrella with the handle carved to look like a gull. His wispy blond hair sat flat against his scalp. He looked up from tying his umbrella to see Eddie, sitting there in the corner, one hand lifted in a brief hello. 

A muscle at Hugh’s mouth twitched. Eddie knew it to be Hugh’s smile, the feeble one he stuck rigid to when nervous. 

How strange it was that he could have broken up with Hugh two years now and still he remembered so many little things about him. Sometimes at the apartment he leased with Richie he found himself bewildered they didn’t have any Swiss Miss hot chocolate, Myra’s favorite brand.

Hugh made his way to the table. He’d a green reusable tote in hand. “Hello, Edward.”

Eddie looked up at him, at the shy way that Hugh stroked two fingers together then tucked that hand in his pocket.

“Hi, Hugh,” he said.

He hadn’t ordered. Hugh said, “Oh, please, allow me,” in earnest. “Black, tall, with one sugar?” 

So Hugh had kept little things too. Eddie said, “No, ah. A latte for me. With a pump of caramel.”

“A latte?” Hugh’s eyebrows arched. “With caramel? Who are you and what have you done with Edward Kaspbrak?”

Eddie smiled, perhaps pinched. He said, “And I even own Hawaiian shirts.”

Hugh lingered, his fingers working in his pocket. Yes, Eddie thought, I’m still with Richie. You already know that. They were friends, as such, on FaceBook, and Richie knew Eddie’s password. He took pleasure in uploading the embarrassing couples photos to Eddie’s private, locked-down page that Eddie wouldn’t allow him to post on his own wall for the world to gawk at.

Hugh went and ordered their drinks. He left the bag on the table. They were Eddie’s things and the reason for this meeting, but Eddie let it be. He checked his phone. Then he set it face first down upon the table and folded one hand over the other hand, the embroidered cuffs of his loose-sleeved shirt tight at the wrist. The buttons gleamed. He touched one lightly with the tip of a finger.

Richie had buttoned the cuffs for him then paused to nuzzle along Eddie’s right wrist. 

“Quit that,” Eddie had said. 

Instead Richie had pressed a slow kiss to center of his wrist, right where the two great mounds of the palm met. Eddie had said again, “Stop,” and Richie had folded Eddie’s fingers back as though to cover up the kiss. 

“So you won’t forget me,” Richie said sadly.

“Dumbass,” said Eddie.

“Your dumbass.”

Eddie had agreed, “My dumbass,” and unfurled his fingers so he could press the kiss first to his lips and then again to Richie’s lips. Richie’s breath moved hotly along the tender skin like webbing between his fingers.

In the little corner of the café, Eddie stirred. The hour in their apartment dressing in the thin gloom of first day slipped from his shoulders. Again he touched the ring, a thin silver band studded at two points with tiny cuts of limestone, Maine-quarried.

Hugh returned with their drinks, the pinky of each hand jutted out like the rudder of a small boat.

“Thanks.”

“Of course. When did you start drinking lattes?”

Eddie sipped at the hot drink. It burnt the blunt edge of his tongue. He grimaced and popped off the lid to set aside. Hugh slid a napkin to him.

“A year ago. I drink more tea now, instead of coffee. My doctor says I’m pre-hypertensive. Richie drinks tea.”

Hugh said, “I see.” He cleared his throat and sipped at his own drink. Caffé Americano. Eddie could smell the particular watered bite of it. 

“The latte’s an indulgence,” Eddie added. He didn’t need to. It was only that Hugh looked as if someone had tightened bolts in his joints. “The rain. I wanted something sweet.”

“It is a miserable day, isn’t it?” Hugh made a face, or as much of a face as he ever made: a small downturn of his lips, a pinching of his brow. “God. We used to have things to talk about.”

Eddie laughed at that, not much. He said, “Did we? Talk about things?”

“That’s all we ever did.”

“I don’t think we ever really talked about anything,” said Eddie. “We just made noise.”

Hugh made a thoughtful sound. “Like a couple of parakeets stuck in the same cage.” He raised an eyebrow and held his drink at his lips. “And do you have much to talk about with Mr Tozier? Of fart joke infamy?”

“Don’t be a dick,” said Eddie comfortably. He sipped at the latte, cooler now that he’d let it sit exposed and still too hot. “I happen to find fart jokes hysterical.”

Hugh raised his drink as though in salute. “Another great mind.”

They sat like that for a time in silence, accompanied by the café’s playlist rolling on to the next coffeehouse-approved indie scene ingénue. The silence had a shape, too many blunt sides and sitting right in the center of the table, but it wasn’t too unpleasant a thing to bear. Most people lived with silences like this after they’d fallen apart, and there were of course worse things to survive than awkwardly drinking coffee at a little table with a man you’d dated but hadn’t loved. Eddie knew that very well.

“Ah, your things,” said Hugh. “I found them while packing up. Thought I could save on shipping if I got them to you before either of us moved.”

Eddie took the bag as offered and set it on the couch beside him without looking into it. 

“You’re moving?” Eddie hadn’t known.

“Yes, south. To Baltimore, actually.”

“Really.” Eddie’s eyebrows met, high. “After you said—”

“And I stand by what I said about lobster rolls,” said Hugh, “but a change of scenery is always healthy. I was born in Vancouver, you know.”

“You mentioned it.”

Hugh gave him a dry look. “And,” he said. “Well. I don’t really know how to say it. But I’m, ah, seeing someone.”

“Good for you, Hugh,” said Eddie and meant it. “Someone in Baltimore?”

“Do you remember that wedding we went to? For your friend, Michael?” Hugh was pinking. “Well, I met one of his cousins there, and we exchanged numbers, and we’ve been talking a lot with each other—”

“Wait, hold,” said Eddie. “Were you cheating on me?”

“Oh, don’t give me that, with you and Richard,” said Hugh, “but no. We didn’t start talking until after the dissolution.”

“Richie, Ri _chie_.”

“I don’t like the man.”

“Nobody calls him Richard. Even his parents call him Richie,” said Eddie. “I’m not saying you have to like him—”

“You only had an emotional affair with him the entirety of our relationship.”

“So I’m the dickhead,” said Eddie, “you can yell at me, but none of it was his fault. He never did anything.”

Hugh said, “The point is,” rather loudly, loudly enough Eddie took a furious mouthful of latte rather than swear at him. “I’m dating Michael’s cousin, Sufian.”

Eddie sneezed on his drink. “You’re dating—” He grabbed at the napkins. Hugh shoved the lot to him then stole one off the top to mop at the table as Eddie mopped at his face.

“You’re dating _Sufian_?”

“He has excellent taste in upholstery,” said Hugh defensively.

“He has three cats,” said Eddie, blotting at his nose. He’d managed not to spill the cup at least. 

“Three very charming cats.”

“You’re allergic.”

“I take a medication for that now,” said Hugh. “I just wanted you to know in the event this turns out to be something real, because we might see each other at future functions.”

“You’re moving to Baltimore for Sufian,” said Eddie, “what the fuck do you mean ‘in the event of’? What are you taking, Claritin?”

“Please, Eddie, nothing over the counter could possibly be sufficient. I’ll be receiving shots at a clinic. It’s all approved and above board.”

“Christ, Hugh,” said Eddie. 

Sufian was 5’10”, had a scar that ran from his forehead left along his nose to his cheek, the cats, two apartments, a thriving interior decorating career, and several medals for boat-racing. The thought of Hugh standing next to Sufian made Eddie’s brain clench. “Sufian’s so cool,” Richie had once whispered, giddy as a kid who’d met Superman, to Eddie. Sufian had an ex-wife who Michael had described as black Wonder Woman if she was also a Bond girl (“sexist,” said Bev loudly) and a rocket scientist (“women’s rights,” said Bev).

The silence settled on the table again. It was very pleased with itself and it sported several sharp corners now.

Hugh at last said, “I’d hoped you’d be happy for me.”

Eddie rubbed at his head. The rain, the atmosphere. He imagined it wouldn’t be much different in Chicago, with the winds and the rains and the storm fronts off the lake. But you’ll be with Richie, he thought as if reassuring some younger, more frightened Eddie. You’ll live in your own house with Richie, and you’ll be married, and all the rooms will be right for you. You won’t have to pull the curtains shut on any of the windows if you don’t want to. 

He said, “I am, Hugh,” and he sighed and he put the lid back on his coffee and wiped at the rim of it with a crumpled napkin and he said, “And I’m sorry, too. The way it ended. I was. Not the best person for it. For any of it. You deserved better.”

“As did you,” Hugh admitted. “Thank you for saying it, but I wasn’t very charming myself. God! I was jealous.”

“I noticed,” said Eddie, returning Hugh’s dryness to him.

Hugh shook his head. “You don’t understand. I wasn’t jealous of him, I was jealous of you. Yes, in the possessive way, but I also.” He touched either side of his nose. “Well, I suppose, as shitty as it is, I was jealous that you’d gone through so much and you were still you.”

“You’re right,” said Eddie. “That is pretty shitty. You used to say these stupid things about how I wouldn’t need the chair.”

“And that was wrong of me,” said Hugh. “I’m not saying this well. I just mean that, none of it made you lesser.”

“It wouldn’t make anyone lesser,” Eddie said. He knew he’d grown louder and his instinct was to gentle, to make himself less obtrusive. But hadn’t Hugh been loud? He wished Richie were there behind Hugh to make some mean joke. He didn’t need Richie there.

Eddie said, “It’s my fucking body, Hugh,” and Hugh looked at him, still with that mulish set to Hugh’s jaw as if he could find the right words for a sentiment that Eddie did not want. Then the line of his jaw eased and the squaring of his shoulders bowed.

Hugh said, “Yes. You’re right.”

The steam from their cups had gone out. Eddie glared at the lid of his own. 

They hadn’t much to say to each other after that. Perhaps there was nothing either of them could have said. So very many things they’d learned about one another, so many of them that they’d remembered, and yet as with Myra they had never truly understood. 

In parting Hugh said, “Oh. I forgot. Congratulations, on your engagement.”

“Congratulations on Sufian,” said Eddie. He dressed in his coat again and put the forearm crutch in place over it.

Hugh held the door for him. Eddie’s teeth stung. He wanted to do some reckless thing, the sort of childish thing that made reasonable people say, was that necessary? 

Eddie nodded stiffly at Hugh and walked out into the drizzle. He opened his umbrella with a small fumble. The tines whisked. The rain began to drum against the waterproofed vinyl. He walked into that rain and away from whatever remained there at the table where they’d sat for a half hour. 

The bag slapped at his ribs, hung as the bag was from his shoulder. He hadn’t needed any of the things inside it. On the corner he shrugged the tote from his shoulder and dumped the pieces of junk into the tall metal trash bin. He left the tote on top if anyone wanted it. Eddie didn’t.

He wondered what absolution was and if anyone ever found it. Already little fists squeezed in the square of his gut. He should have let Hugh finish. He should have made his own apologies more sincere. He ought to have been gentler.

Exhaling harshly through his nose he gripped hard at the handle jutting at the wrist joint of the crutch. His fingernails dug into the rubber. He held it till his palm numbed with stars.

Then Eddie flagged a cab. He wanted to be home in time for lunch. Richie had taken off the week. He fitted into the back of the cab and gave the driver the address. Leaning his head back on the rest, Eddie looked out to the rain. He thought of grilled cheese sandwiches and a thick tomato soup and the tea Richie made by stuffing three bags into each cup and microwaving both at the same time in cheery birds up to the kettle. Eddie had bought the kettle last month so Richie would stop nuking water in the microwave; the tea boiled over and made the revolving dish sticky. 

Asshole, Eddie thought. He smiled, something secret. He rolled the ring around his finger, feeling as he did so for the little chunks of Derry limestone. If he closed his eyes he could imagine rather than lunch the feel of gravity plucking you out of the air and into the quarry water. You’d plunge screaming into it and pop up gasping for air, heart thrilling and lungs singing, there where they’d dug out the limestone in the thirties and the forties and left small pieces to be found by curious hands, treasured flakes of rock put away and found years later and held out in your hand so that Richie could look at them and laugh and say, “Jeez-a Louis-a, cheese on my pizza. Eds, is that bona fide quarry dirt?” and you’d laugh too and say, “D’you know how many fucking moves this shit has to have survived? I’ve been lugging Derry rock for thirty years.”

Richie had pinched the larger chunks from Eddie’s palm. “Eddie,” he said, holding one of those jagged rocks to the ceiling light. “Look at it. It’s probably older than the dinosaurs.”

It survived all the same.

**i’m wishing (i’m wishing) for the one i love.**

Nothing Richie did in his sleep translated to logic. He might cling or he might shove away. He crushed pillows some nights and on other nights he kicked off the comforter and now and then he coiled snake-like with his knees drawn to his chest and his arms wound out in strange configurations towards the side of their California king bed, fingers dripping over the edge. 

The night after the Man of Style ceremony, he rode out the pre-dawn on his back with one arm twisted behind his head, fingers half-snuck through his own hair. The other arm was bent at the waist, his hand flat across the slight hillock of his belly. His pectorals, fat and muscle alike, succumbed to gravity; each pulled outward to the sides of his chest. He’d abandoned the sheets no matter the silken fineness of the thread count. In consequence most of him lay bared to the ceiling and the low-humming air conditioning and Eddie who watched him in shy secret tenderness from the sanctuary of his own pillows.

In sleep Richie snored, low rumbles not unlike the grumbling presumed of a bear caught in the spring after the thaws made mud of the earth and white swells in the rivers and creeks. On the worst of Eddie’s nights, the nights he couldn’t sleep without dreaming of the cistern, he laid awake listening to the snores with his heart thunder-paced certain that he would hear Richie’s breathing stop. The breathing never stopped. Eddie had still wrung a promise out of Richie to schedule an appointment with a sleep clinic. 

“How would you even sleep with me in that mask?” Richie had complained. “Gas mask. I’d look like one of those guys at Chernobyl.”

“I’d rather sleep next to you in the mask than wake up to you dead because of sleep apnea.”

Richie had laughed but Eddie scowling had resorted to violence, stabbing Richie between his shoulder blades with the ladle handle. He was making latka for breakfast, “the food of my people,” Richie said somberly before adding a handful of shredded cheese from the bag of Sargento® Shredded Taco Natural Cheese.

At the stabbing, Richie yelped. He turned, eyes limpid blue and wounded.

“I’m serious, Rich!” said Eddie. He served the rest of his frustration out on flipping the cakes in the pan. “You could choke in your sleep without ever waking up. And you could finally sleep through the night. But more importantly you won’t just fucking die from something entirely manageable if you just see sleep specialist.”

Richie was quiet a moment or two after that, letting Eddie slap the potato cakes down on the serving plate before he’d move on to adding the next prepped batch to the pan. 

Warm arms engulfed Eddie. Richie’s big hands, gorilla knuckles and all, folded together over Eddie’s chest, just shy of his heart and very nearly over the scar hidden beneath his button-down. 

“You’d really be sad if I died,” said Richie softly. His chin pressed into the low soft hollow where Eddie’s shoulder curved in elegant curl and hard bend to his throat. 

“Of course I would, idiot. I married you.”

“You’d have to wear one of those black dresses… A pillbox hat with a black veil on it…”

Eddie turned abruptly in Richie’s arms. The pan sizzled warnings behind him and Richie before him blinked behind his glasses then offered Eddie a crooked smile.

“Don’t you die on me, asshole,” Eddie snapped; but he knew how he must look, clinging with his fingers tightening in Richie’s THE MUNSTERS tee and his brows beetled and his mouth a traitor pulling longly to either side. He meant to look away but didn’t. “I don’t want to be on some dumbass TMZ livestream of your funeral.”

“Aw, Eddie,” said Richie, “would you miss me?” and he held Eddie’s jaw in his palm and stroked the fingertips lightly across his suntanned cheek.

“Yes,” said Eddie. It felt like nails, tugged out from his gums. Not that he was shamed to love Richie, but rather that he could not face it, the thing he sometimes saw in his dreams. “Yeah. I’d miss you, bro.”

Richie petted his cheek again then bent to kiss him, and the press of Richie’s lips made Eddie shuddered and his knee tremble and lock. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Eds,” said Richie. “You’re stuck with ol’ Trashmouth.” 

The latka burned in the pan. Eddie turned to yank the pan from the stove, as Richie hurried out of the way with the serving plate in hand. He scooped a cake from the plate and crammed it still hot in his mouth, making grunting sounds at the heat as he did so. Eddie hadn’t the chance to say what he wanted to say, but then he hadn’t the words either. 

In the hotel room Richie sighed sleepily and his fingers ticked twice against his belly and he rubbed his cheek into the pillow. Still he slept. Eddie reached with light touches to brush the wayward hair from his brow. To run the backs of his knuckles along the topographical mountain rise of his cheekbone. Like a ghost drawn irrevocably to the span of light cast by a lamp stripped of its shade, that was how Eddie touched him. He felt at times as if something of the ghost lived in him. 

Richie shifted. He made to turn on his side, facing Eddie. Eddie rested fingertips and palm against Richie’s breast. He leaned near to kiss Richie. Richie’s lips were soft, malleable. His beard scratched chafed skin. Warmth suffused Richie. Breath heaved through him.

He hummed and his legs moved swimmish beneath the comforter to tangle with Eddie’s legs. Eddie’s knee throbbed. His spine was a singular line of pain, tempered only so by the Tylenol he’d taken with water from the dresser. He breathed out.

With little tectonic shufflings Richie closed the distance between them. His eyes lidded, pupils drowsy thick. He hummed bearish again.

Eddie smoothed his hands across Richie’s face: his brow, his cheeks, the thicket of his jaw. He kissed Richie sweetly again. 

“G’morning,” Richie mumbled.

“Hey,” said Eddie. He pressed his brow to Richie’s brow. “Good morning.”

“How ya?”

“Chair day.”

Richie blinked. He frowned. “Sorry,” he said through a yawn. Contrition folded lines around his mouth. “I shoulda been…” He yawned again.

It was surprise took him then: Eddie kissed him through that second, bone-cracking yawn. He imagined this swelled his lungs, Richie’s morning breath filling him up; but of course that was impossible and perhaps dangerous besides. 

“It’s fine,” Eddie said, lingering there with the temptation and victory of Richie’s turned out lips. “I figured. That’s why I brought it.”

“Didn’t wanna make you use it.” Richie slid a palm in a long, apologetic line along Eddie’s side, from armpit to the square jut of hip. 

“I wanted to.” He nuzzled Richie’s nose. “I like fucking you.”

Richie let out a shivery laugh. He said, “I’m more than just a juicy piece of ass, Mr Kaspbrak,” in a plaintive office assistant’s tenor.

With his fingernails, Eddie scratched delicate leylines through Richie’s hair. Perhaps sleepy himself, Eddie thought he drew a spell along his scalp. Richie predictably stretched catlike under these ministrations and butted his head into Eddie’s hands, both now at work combing through his dark curls.

“I know,” said Eddie matter of fact. “You deserved that award last night.”

“I did not,” Richie all but purred out, still rolling his head with pleasure under Eddie’s biting fingers. “That was all Beverly Marsh and you know it.”

“No, that was you,” said Eddie. He shut Richie up with a sharp pull on his hair. Color dashed across Richie’s cheeks. “That was you, too.” His skin itched. He pushed on: “I was so proud of you, Richie. I am proud of you.”

Lines creased at the corners of Richie’s eyes. Without his glasses he was vulnerable. Even in deepest sleep he looked vulnerable, as if some part of him were exposed, the dimensions of his face made normal. 

He said, “Gosh, Eddie,” all Clark Kent, “I just stood up there in a suit and looked good. I didn’t really do anything all that important.”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Eddie with earnest feeling. “I love you, Rich, but right now you need to do whatever it takes to fucking cram it. Do you understand me. Nod yes. Do not say it.”

Richie made a show of rolling his eyes, pursing his lips, ticking his tongue against either cheek so his cheeks bulged: want me to suck your dick too?

“Trashmouth,” Eddie warned.

At last with a pantomimed sigh, his massive shoulders rising then falling, Richie nodded. He managed to flutter his eyelashes with attitude as he did it. Eddie pinched his thigh for that and Richie startled then looked delighted.

Eddie said, “I love you. No, keep your mouth shut.”

Richie wriggled. His right eye creased up with a laugh, swallowed.

“I love you,” said Eddie again, more softly. He felt it breaking loose inside him, like how even fossilized rock candy broke apart in water. “I love your laugh. You sound like a beached fish. I love how much you laugh.”

How meanly Richie had used to laugh. Derry made passing shadows; then Eddie cast them away. Richie looked now as if he wanted to laugh very badly at beached fish.

“I love your beard,” said Eddie, and he kissed Richie’s jaw, his chin. “I love your crooked teeth.” He kissed Richie’s upper lip. “I love your receding hairline.” He craned. Obliging, Richie dipped his head. This kiss, Eddie left to linger high on his lining brow. Richie’s eyebrows were arched with humor and question.

“I love your shoulders,” said Eddie. “I love your adam’s apple. I love the hair you grow on your neck. You need to shave it.” 

Under his kisses, each so carefully laid, Richie began to work like a bellows, slowly waking. 

“I love your hairy nipples. I love your hairy chest. I love your belly.” He was too sore to bend that low and so he pressed a kiss to hand and then his hand to Richie’s broad gut. 

Richie’s chest swelled hugely. It fell. Eddie tangled his fingers in Richie’s hair and kissed him. He couldn’t help but to kiss him. The sunlight had started to stream through the bay windows of the suite. It crept up along the comforter, along Richie’s bared legs.

“I love you,” Eddie said fiercely and kissed him again before he could speak. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to haunt you. I’m gonna fucking haunt you, you dick.”

“Shut up, baby,” said Richie. He squeezed at Eddie’s ass then gentled his touch when Eddie clenched his teeth at the flash of sugar-fire. “If anyone’s haunting anybody it’s me haunting you because no way in hell you die before me.”

“If you die before I die I’ll fucking kill you.”

“You’re a psycho, Eds, you know that, right?”

“Whose fucking fault is that!”

“Well, Eddie,” said Richie, “probably your mom’s,” and he laughed as Eddie began to beat him with the corner of the comforter. “Ow! Uncle! Uncle! This is spousal abuse! I want a divorce!”

“We didn’t sign a pre-nup,” Eddie said triumphant and Richie rolled on top of him but with such care that Eddie found his heart moved like a startled bird in his chest.

There were days very early on, those first few months of dating, when Richie had almost shied from Eddie. It was the Derry touch. It was the werewolf in the letterman jacket. It was the graffiti in the boys’ bathroom at school that said RICHIE TOZIER SUCKS FLAMER COCK. It was Betty Ripsom’s legs tap-dancing to them from the depths of a closet marked Very Scary. 

Loomingly, Richie kissed Eddie’s temple. His hands cupped Eddie’s biceps. They slid to his shoulders then to his elbows. Eddie parted his mouth to Richie.

They had fought once, twice, those early days trying to understand each other’s life in the context not only of their mutual histories but the lives they’d made. Richie and Eddie argued. They didn’t fight. Oh, they’d fought, the worst of it the night Eddie had snidely said he had more relationship experience than Richie.

“Because you’re gonna leave, man,” Richie had shouted at the end of it. “’Cause I’m fucked up! ‘Cause I’m aaaall screwed up, Eddie! All I do is suck dick and fuck everything up so just save yourself the trouble and just go, Eds, just go, okay,” deflating as he said this, “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. I pulled you into this. Just. I’m sorry.”

The fury had gone out of Eddie. What a stupid thing they had fought over. Loading the dishwasher, but the dishwasher was Eddie’s unwillingness to open up and the dishwasher was Richie’s fear he wasn’t enough and for a moment it had seemed as though that was it. 

Eddie had stood there, a hand on the dining table. He looked at Richie, covered with self-loathing the way Eddie carried fear as a cloak, fear of his own bravery. Richie’s hatred was fear too. You won’t want me. You won’t love me.

So Eddie had stood there and he’d said, “Why would I ever leave you, Richie?” and Richie, head bowed, had slowly lifted his head to look at Eddie across that cramped apartment. Eddie said, “You dipshit,” so tenderly it made his heart stick on the ends of his ribs. “You’re so fucking smart. You can’t figure it out? I’m in love with you.”

Now in their hotel room, Richie in boxers and Eddie still nude, Richie pressed his cheek to Eddie’s cheek and murmured, “You know, I bet we pass the concierge a couple hundo, he’ll let us stay another couple nights. We could celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” 

“Honeymoon,” said Richie.

“We already did that.” They’d spent their honeymoon at home, something the Losers had each of them understood. But Eddie spidered his fingers up Richie’s arm to indicate he was open to persuasion.

“Yeah, but this time with room service,” said Richie. “We can order in champagne. I could pour it on you and lick it off.”

“You’d have to give me a bath after that,” said Eddie. “And who’s going to change the sheets? I’m not sleeping in drying champagne.”

“Leave it to me. Okay,” Richie amended, “leave it to the on demand maid service.”

“You’re fucked in the head if you think I’m letting a maid in to change champagne sheets.”

“They change worse,” said Richie, “way worse. The stories I could tell you about L.A. celebrities would turn your pubes white.”

“Honeymoon in L.A.!” said Eddie with disgust. “Cheapskate. We could go to Hawai’i.”

“We could go to Ontario.”

“Shut up about poutine. I’m tired of poutine.”

“You’ve never even tried poutine, how can you—”

“Maybe you should have married poutine.”

“Maybe I should order poutine and eat that off you,” said Richie.

“Try it,” said Eddie dangerously. 

Richie, waggling his eyebrows, licked Eddie’s neck. It was not at all sensual. Eddie found it reminiscent of a cow.

“You’re lucky I love you,” Eddie grumbled.

Richie smiled down at him. His eyes were soft-lidded. The clumps of his eyelashes stood in stark and sleepy contrast to the eye boogers he sported in the corners. Affection stabbed Eddie in the kidneys. That or he needed the codeine. He didn’t want the codeine. He didn’t need the codeine, really. Pain for Eddie with regards to the spinal cord injury existed along duller lines. He got aches, like the sort the old men of Derry complained about in their knees before nor’easters. Sometimes pop rocks went off in his hip, but the way that they frizzled and sparked was so unlike how Eddie understood pain that he had had to learn to recognize them as warning. Water run too hot felt cold to the skin.

He’d regular arguments about pain management with his physical therapist, his primary care provider, his neurologist, and the doctor who actually prescribed his pain medications. Too much severe pain could increase stress and shorten his life span, but an opoid addiction would do much the same. It was, as Richie said, a job for Superjane. Eddie did not yet know the legality of asking room service for weed and Richie always got weird about drugs in Los Angeles, a legacy of his long ago coke addiction. 

These were the things Eddie thought as Richie gazed lovingly down at him. Love at this angle gave Richie crossed eyes and a doubled chin.

“Yeah,” said Richie, “I know. I’m the luckiest chimp in the jungle.” He sat upright, disrupting Eddie, and swung both his legs off his side of the bed while twisting at the waist and leaning toward Eddie. “Stay still, Fay Wray. King Kong’s gonna bridal carry you into the shower now.”

Eddie forgot the weed gummies he’d just remembered he had stashed in the Velcro pouch of his wheelchair.

“Fuck you, you don’t have the ass strength,” said Eddie. “You couldn’t possibly oh, _Christ_ , you idiot, if you fucking break my back—”

Richie grunted and managed to straighten. With heroic effort he turned from the bed, his hands carefully distributed to hold Eddie smoothly as he walked.

“One song,” Richie sang, “I have but one song. One song, only for you.”

“I will kill you,” said Eddie, cast as Snow White. His lower back throbbed, a dull entreaty nothing to the delighted feeling spilling through Eddie, filling his voice, threatening to turn his scowl upside down. “Don’t you fucking drop me!” 

He was laughing; he hated that he laughed; he flung an arm around Richie’s neck and clutched with the other at his chest. Richie’s hands warmed him at ass and at the apex of his shoulder blades. His fingers were wide-spread and rough-touched.

“One heart,” Richie brayed, “tenderly beating, ever entreating, constant and true!”

“Bastard. Asshole. Jerk,” said Eddie. He tucked his face beneath Richie’s chin and kissed lightly at the faint dip at the crux of Richie’s collarbones. 

“One song,” Richie sang in somber baritone, “that has possessed me. One love, thrilling me through,” and rubbing his nose into Eddie’s bed-made rumple of hair, he kicked open the door to the bathroom, come complete with seated shower and Jacuzzi tub and mirrors, so many mirrors, mirrors that made refractions of them, ghosts come forth to watch in longing as they kissed under the corkscrew lights. Then they were only reflections. They were only ever reflections.

**and love. and love. and love.**

Bathed and freshly dressed they made their way to the restaurant on the third floor of the hotel, overlooking the lushly gardened lobby. Eddie maneuvered the electric wheelchair with grace. At that hour the restaurant was bustling, a glass-walled treat illuminated by the sunlight that came through the wall of windows at the hotel’s face and from dimmed spotlights in the floor. 

Ben spotted them and rose from the wide table reserved for this brunch. He was beaming, at odds with Beverly who’d worn tinted glasses and nursed a glass of tomato juice. 

“Hey, there they are. Look at you guys, you look great.” He pressed a kiss without warning to Richie’s cheek and as Richie oohed miss-ishly, he bent to do the same to Eddie. “Here, I went ahead and grabbed the book.” He handed it to Eddie, a copy of _Downbelow Station_ by C.J. Cherryh.

“What happened to you?” Richie was asking loudly. “Get in a fistfight with Captain Morgan?”

Beverly pressed two fingers to her temple. “Richard.”

“Beverly.” He collapsed into the seat across from her.

“One day,” she said, “you’ll get streptococcus. I saw it in the Deadlights.”

“I’ve got plenty of coccus, why would you strip it from me?” 

He might have grabbed at his crotch if they were still kids. Instead he winked at Eddie, who had rolled up to the table and was flipping through the book.

“Eddie, what do you think?” Bev asked. “A quiet Trashmouth is a happy Trashmouth?”

Eddie, perhaps still punch-drunk from shower dick, considered many responses. In the end he set the book on the table and said, “No, I like it.”

Richie cooed. “Aw, darling. Eddie, my love. I shall serenade thee at midnight.”

“It’s like at Jurassic Park,” Eddie went on. “The ripples in the water, it lets you know when he’s getting nearer.”

Throwing his head back, Richie cackled. “Eddie with the chucks. He’s like a little raptor. Always clawing.”

“All right, cool it, Michael Crichton,” said Ben, looking amused. “You guys ready to order your drinks or what?”

“Who the fuck is Michael Crichton?”

“You illiterate ape,” said Eddie, “‘who the fuck is Michael Crichton’? We watched The Andromeda Strain four nights ago and you said—”

“I said wow, this movie’s budget sucks. You’d think if they were ripping off Contagion they’d get a little more starpower.”

Eddie whipped his head around to glare at Ben. “Two mimosas.”

“And a lemon tea with honey,” said Richie. “Gotta keep the ol’ slide whistle perky and ready to blow.”

“So a mimosa for each of you and a tea for Richie.”

“The mimosas are for me,” said Eddie.

Ben without blinking said, “Two mimosas for Eddie and a tea for Richie,” and flagged a waiter. 

Richie leaned across the table to murmur, “I can shut up if that’s easier for you. How much you drink last night anyway?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Bev. “Don’t shut up. You don’t have to shut up. Just not so loud.”

“I can be very quiet,” said Richie. “I’ll be like a church mouse. Tiny and religiously intolerant.”

“Thank you,” Beverly sighed as the waiter brought her a glass of water as well. 

“Man, last night was my party and I barely drank anything,” Richie said, deeply entertained. His grin widened as Beverly flipped him off with her middle finger around the glass of water. “Miss Marsh, what did you do? Did you take _advantage_ of poor, sweet Ben? You scarlet woman?”

“Stop, you’ll make him blush. You’re cute when you blush,” Bev told Ben, who hadn’t blushed but did now and with a squinting puppy-ish glare at Richie.

“God, you’re right. He’s adorable.”

“If I don’t have pancakes in the next ten minutes I’m going to stab you for emotional adultery,” Eddie announced. 

“What, with your coccus?”

Eddie looked for silverware. Ben hid his handsome laughter in a napkin, but Bev didn’t bother, spraying giggles out between her fingers. 

“Why don’t I have a knife?” 

“Because we warned the waitstaff about you, Eddie,” Beverly managed between her squeaks. “We didn’t— We didn’t want to— Get the CDC in here.”

“Why the fuck would they have to call the CDC?”

“Yeah,” said Richie, “what’re you trying to say here? Huh? That my man’s an imposter? That he’s an alien? That I’m sexually attracted to his Rubik’s Cube penis?”

Eddie drained the first mimosa, set the champagne flute on the table, made sure it was squared neatly with the unrolled napkin and silverware, and then said, “Can we FaceTime Mike and Bill before I lose my mind?”

“Oh, right!” said Beverly. “Oh, shit, wait, everybody write down your orders, I’m going to put them in. Ben, your tablet’s better, if you could?”

He made an agreeable noise, tablet already out. 

“Well, hey,” said Richie, “we oughtta call Stan and the gals. Eddie, do you have…”

“Back pocket.” Eddie gestured. 

Leaning back in his chair, Richie fumbled with the zippered pack hitched to Eddie’s wheelchair. He caught his knee on the table and precariously held himself there as he dug for the tech pocket. 

“Don’t fall over. Richie, just get up, you’re going to fall.”

“Worrywart,” said Richie. He pulled the tablet out and rezipped the pack as his chair fell forward back on all its legs. His face pulled; he banged his knee on the way down. “All right, let’s loop them into the circus.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, more at the stunt Richie had pulled, as if a leg breaking off the chair would not have spilled him across the floor. Richie manipulated the touch-screen.

“Of course I’m a worrywart,” Eddie muttered to him. “Somebody has to look out for you. You never do it yourself.” 

His heart twinged some at the thought of Richie, alone. He wondered if that was how his mother had started out, but it was easy now to flick that sort of thinking from him. 

Anyway Richie was saying, syrup-sweet, “Yes, dear. Of course, honey,” and Eddie thought about whacking him with the book. 

“Hey!” came Mike from the other tablet. “It’s about time you called.”

“Man of the hour just got down,” Ben told him. “We wanted to make sure they got alcohol in them first thing.”

Mike laughed. “We just wrapped breakfast on our end. So where’s the stylish fellow himself? Bill! We’re on FaceTime! Get in here!”

Ben flipped the tablet around so Mike and Bill, who came wandering into the room with two steaming mugs in hand, could see Richie squinting two inches from his own tablet waiting for Stan to pick up.

“Hey, Rich!”

“Trashmouth!” said Bill. “Stop watching porn!” His voice faded as he spoke to Mike. “Hot chocolate with cinnamon.” They kissed briefly. 

“Got ‘em,” said Richie with triumph. The screen flickered. Stan, spectacles low on his nose, said, “Richie, why am I looking up your nose?”

“That could be anyone’s nose,” Richie protested. “That could be Eddie’s nose.” He pulled the tablet away.

“I know what the inside of your nose looks like,” said Stan darkly. 

Bev returned to the table with a mimosa in each hand. “Orders in,” she said. “Mike, you wanted the chocolate waffles with the peanut butter sauce?”

“No, that’s Bill,” said Richie.

An avalanche of beep-beep, Richies fell on him from all directions. With a wounded air he looked around the table at each person.

“Give me Stan,” said Eddie; he took the tablet out of Richie’s hands. “Hey, Stan. Are the girls up?”

“Six a.m. every day,” said Stan. “Patty’s in the garden, let me go get her.”

They arranged the tablets thusly: Ben held his tablet extended out between him and Beverly so that Bill and Mike could see the other tablet as well as Richie and Eddie, while Eddie held Richie’s tablet at arms length and tipped slightly in the hope the Urises could see most of the table. 

The conversation immediately dissolved into nonsense. Mike and Bill were still working on the outline for their book, now the first in a series. Pressed for details they talked over each other. Eddie’s impression was of the sort of thing you discovered scrawled on the walls of an apartment where someone had died forgotten to be found years later under a mound of old clothes. 

Richie said, “Wow, yeah, that sounds interesting. Will this be written in a human language, that people can read?”

Beverly hid her laughter better this time. Ben frowned at Richie and then, unbelievably, at Eddie. 

“What!” said Eddie. “I didn’t say anything. I’m sure it’ll be really popular or whatever.”

“Go on,” said Mike in that deep, dry way he had. 

“You’ll sell millions,” Eddie said. “To, um. Literary enthusiasts. All over the world.” He gestured broadly. Richie ducked to avoid being clocked with a mimosa.

“None of you read books,” said Bill. He hadn’t combed his hair and it stuck out in grey ruffles around his head. “You guys are completely illiterate.”

“I can confirm that I am illiterate,” said Beverly to the assembled group. 

Brunch arrived. Stan made comments about how excited he was to watch everyone eat. 

“This should be thrilling for you,” said Richie around a mouthful of a double cheese with spinach and brown rice omelet. 

“Yeah, are your kids using forks and spoons yet?” added Eddie, to Richie’s delight.

“Insult my children to their faces,” said Stan. He turned the screen slightly on his end and both his daughters crowded the screen to shout hellos and hi hi hi and didja forget me and

“I lost a tooth!” said Joan proudly. She pulled up her lip to show everyone. Ben and Bev both oohed appreciatively at this accomplishment.

“That’s some good hard cash,” Richie said, pointing his fork at the screen. “What’s the going rate for a tooth? One dollar?”

Joan looked smug. “No, it’s a quarter and that’s twenty-five so it’s more.” 

Naomi, older by five years, flicked her braids over her shoulder in disdain. She’d colorful beads wound into those braids and Joan, her shorter hair in elegant Bantu knots, slapped at those braids.

“That does make sense,” said Eddie gravely before the girls got started. “Twenty-five is more than one.”

“But how many twenty-fives go into a dollar?” asked Richie. 

Patty stepped into frame then, encircling the girls in her arms and hugging them with a sway. “Do not destroy this economy for us,” she said sternly to Richie. Her head was shaved, a black shadow on her brown scalp. “We are learning the value of a quarter.” She stressed the words to Joan, who nodded solemnly.

“I already know, Uncle Richie,” said Naomi. “It’s four quarters in a dollar. They’re fleecing us.”

“Fleecing is stealing,” said Stan from off-screen.

“How many quarters is in a what?” Joan twisted in Patty’s arms.

Stan turned the tablet around and said, “Would anyone else care to disrupt the delicate web of truces we have established in our household?”

“Fight the patriarchy!” shouted Beverly. She’d ordered ice cream for her meal. 

“You think Stanley’s the patriarchy?” asked Richie.

Eddie scoffed. “He wears sweater vests; of course he’s the patriarchy.”

“What is this patriarchy?” asked Mike. “Has the black man been uplifted to the halls of the oppressor?”

“He got your ass,” Richie said to Eddie, who spluttered.

Ben and Stanley fell into a conversation about woodworking and building near-natural bird habitation. Eddie tuned them out. He looked over at his husband, who’d given up on utensils to scrape together the collapsing remnants of his omelet with his fingers and feed them into his mouth that way.

A terrible fondness warmed Eddie’s heart, a fondness of knowing. Here was his husband who sat cross-legged on the floor to eat pizza, each slice folded in half. In the night sometimes he woke not from nightmares but some other disturbance, his snoring maybe. He’d go to the kitchen and pop open the fridge and eat pickles or olives straight from the jar in a sleep-lidded haze. 

Eddie slid his spoon to Richie. Richie gave him a little, half-shy smile, and Eddie took that smile and folded it in even squares and tucked it under his heart. 

He wished they were all of them together in person. It was something they all felt. Bill’s clapped hands at a joke that caught him off guard resounded in person. Patty and Stan’s rhythmic patter worked like a drum line. 

Invitations were passed out from the Uris household: if the Losers Club might attend a grand ball to celebrate the adoption of Naomi Leah Uris and Joan Zelda Uris. 

“We’re going to wear dresses!” said Joan excitedly. “Poofy princess ones! And crowns! And, um, patent leather shoes!” she said, quoting.

“You have to come,” said Naomi, softer. “Um. If you want to come.”

“Of course we’re coming,” said Beverly, all enchantment. She clasped her hands together. Her bangle bracelets chimed. “I have to see these dresses.”

“You know we wouldn’t miss a party,” said Richie, fully uncle. “Especially not one of the Uris ragers. You gonna get the Wiggles?”

Naomi wrinkled her nose. “Who’s the Wiggles?”

“Eddie, they don’t know who the Wiggles are,” said Richie.

“I don’t know who the Wiggles are,” said Eddie.

“They sound gross!” said Joan. “Like worms! Big gross worms!”

On the other tablet, Mike was laughing so hard he’d buried his face in Bill’s shoulder. Bill sipped serenely at his cooled tea.

They bandied about talk of renting a beach house the next summer. Ben and Beverly would be in New York City for the New Year’s, if anyone was interested? Mike thought they could make it. 

Richie grimaced. “Sorry. No can do. I’m doing a special at the Moody down in Austin. Eddie could probably make it, though.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course I’m going to Texas with you,” said Eddie. “It’s your first live show since, what. April last year? At Madison Square? I’m going.”

That won him another of the sweet, private smiles, the ones that said oh! You love me. As if Richie should ever have reason to doubt what was to Eddie as true as the movement of the Earth in predicted orbit around the Sun.

Everyone liked the beach house idea, and Stan and Ben’s discussion about woodworking evolved into seedling ideas of a hiking or camping trip to which Mike expressed interest. More food was ordered. Richie added three fluffy Belgian waffles to his tab. He split them with Eddie, who preferred chocolate sauce and whipped cream from the offered tub over the raspberry sauce Richie liked to drench his waffles in. 

A feeling of home had settled upon the table. Eddie wiggled his toes languorously in the feel. How sad it must seem if written on paper, to live half your life waiting to find the family of friends you’d had as a child. How many years lost, how vast the years of loneliness. And though it did perhaps sting, he didn’t mind the wasp’s stab. They were here after all in the end, all of them, all of them and Patty and Stan and Patty’s girls and sometimes, Eddie thought now and then, another child. A Tozier child. A Kaspbrak kid. 

He looked at Richie, laughing as he spun out an elaborate tall tale for the rest of the table, and wondered.

Somewhere in there, as silverware clinked, plates nearly clean but the check still a thing to come, Eddie reclaimed his spoon and one of the emptied flutes. He rang the spoon on the champagne flute; it sang out a bell. 

“A toast,” said Eddie. “To my husband. To Richie Tozier. Man of Style.”

Razzing ensued but hear hears as well, and Bev held her glass especially high and said, “To the man who makes my suits look good!”

“Now we’re toasting you’re husband?” Richie joked.

“To Richie,” said Ben, “whose mouth runs fast but not as fast as his heart.”

“Uncle Richie!” “Uncle Rich!” “You tell the best stories and you’re really funny!” “You’re okay,” said Naomi, and she smiled to show it a joke. 

“Ah, c’mon, you guys,” said Richie, face shining as he tried to crumple up his shoulders. “What is this? Are we share circling?”

“To Trashmouth,” said Bill, hoisting his cup of tea. “My jaw still hurts where you punched me. But I probably deserved it. You’re, uh, my brother, I guess.”

Richie was blinking rapidly behind his glasses. He said, “Man, Bill, no way. I was a total dick.”

“I’m glad you’re back, Rich,” said Mike. “Every day, man. You better make me laugh on my sick bed.”

“To Richard Tozier,” said Stanley. He offered nothing else, only a glass of water raised up. His wife, slinging her arm around him, leaned closer to the tablet. “Richie,” she said, “we are all so proud of you. And I’m not just saying that because you got me Kerry’s autograph.”

Laughter spilled around the table. Richie wiped at his eyes with finger and thumb. “What the hell, Stan, why is your wife funnier than me?”

Eddie touched his arm. Wet-eyed, jaw braced, Richie glanced sidelong at him.

“I love you,” Eddie said. He cradled Richie’s left hand in both his own and lifted it tender to hold at his chin. “I’m so proud of you. Every day. I’m so happy I found you again. And you deserve it. All of it.”

He kissed the ring on Richie’s finger.

“You guys are freaks,” said Richie, “you’re all sadists,” and he took Eddie’s napkin to push up under his glasses to hide his crying. 

Laughing, loving, the Losers embraced him. Hiding a sweetmost kiss in Richie’s temple, Eddie murmured, “Thank you for finding me.” Under his hands Richie trembled. Against him, Richie leaned.

In the warmth of the press, in the belly of all their love, Richie turned and pressed his face to Eddie’s cheek and whispered, “Eddie. Eds. Please. Can I keep you?”

And Eddie, caught, kept: Eddie pulled from the ice: Eddie who lived and held in his hands Richie’s hand clutching so harshly at his own:

He said, “Yes.”

**the dressing room, 2020.**

He clipped the sock suspenders to his boxers on either side, on either leg. The effect in the mirror proved absurd. Eddie blew air out through his nose then went to work attaching the suspenders over his chest to his waistband.

“Stop fussing,” said Bev. “You look fine. Besides, you said Richie likes it, right?”

“Like some zitty thirteen year old popping a bra strap.”

“Well, give him a dead arm for me.”

She helped Eddie into his button-down, a dark lavender thing spotted here and there with stylized suns embroidered in gold thread. He managed the buttons as she did a quick lint check on his white jacket and trousers, still in their dry cleaning bags but as Bev said, “You can’t be too safe. Dust mice are an infection.”

He got into the trousers next with only the lightest of balancing tricks. They were wide cut, just slightly, to account for the leg brace, and he liked the look of them on his legs in contrast to the snug way they fit ‘round his waist. 

Bev whistled her approval then laughed as he batted at her. “All right, all right. You’ve got the rest from here?”

“I can still put on a jacket,” he said. He had to for work whether at home or at the office. Some days he envied Richie his too-tight graphic tees.

“Okay, just holler if you need anything! I’m going to get in my dress. Do not change a strand of your hair!” she shouted over her shoulder as she dashed out the room.

Winkling his nose Eddie looked at his hair in the mirror. Finally, satisfied, he stepped back to retrieve his suit jacket from the bed. A lavender pocket square with a single embroidered star and a lavender tie without embroidery lay on either side of the jacket.

He wished, as he slipped into the jacket, that Richie were in the room with him. In that chair perhaps, the wicker chair by the window, and cracking jokes about zoot suits. Eddie imagined the hat and then imagined the hat on Richie. He snorted. 

Tie, then pocket square. He performed these small actions by rote. How would Richie have teased him? How would he have fumbled the tie and apologized all wide-eyed and eyelashed? Gosh, Mr Kaspbrak, you’re not… hot-blooded are you?

Eddie snorted again at the thought. None of it had worked. He still wanted Richie. 

“You’ll see him in an hour,” he told his reflection above the vanity.

God! An hour. 

“Well,” he said, “you waited this long,” and he stuck out his chin and turned some on his heel first one way and then of course the other, to study the look of his jaw, the line of his nose. He’d chosen not to cover up the scar on his cheek. He brushed at it with two fingers.

This is me, he thought. This is who I am. My back. The leg brace. The hollow in my chest, the scar on my cheek. 

These things were immutable. They could not change. It was a bargain he’d made, he thought, when he’d thrown himself in front of Richie down in the deep hateful guts of Derry. He ought to have died. He’d lived instead. 

“I love him,” said Eddie out loud to his reflection. The Eddie there in the glass said it with him. 

These are the things I know to be true. 

Eddie breathed. He felt the manners in which his lungs, one half-amputated and the other yet whole, expanded and strained. The breath came out of him in a heated gush. 

He picked up his cane. Twice he tapped it on the floor, two hard strikes.

“Richie Tozier,” he said to the air as in challenge. “I’m going to love you.”

He did. He does. He will. He has. He will. He will. He will.

And somewhere out there, somewhere near, Richie Tozier let Ben Hanscom fix his tie and as Ben fixed his tie Richie thought, I’ll love you forever, Eddie, earnest and true. Yes, true.

Such things are immutable. Such things cannot change. The bargain you make is to love, and what is it you receive in exchange? A hand reaches out to hold your own, and in that hand is love. That is all we have to give. 

Perhaps the turtle knew that. If it did, it never told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for everyone who stuck around for this finale. It took longer than I thought it would but damn it, we made it. 
> 
> Faceclaim notes: Hugh is played by David Hyde Pierce circa 1999. Sufian is played (off-screen) by Michael K. Williams. Patty is recast with Tiffany Haddish.
> 
> I guess in the end it was about love.


End file.
